Transcripts
1. Introduction to Overcoming Perfectionism in Writing: Hello. My name is Matthew Dewey, and I am an active
writing instructor, and I hope you enjoy
this course on overcoming perfectionism
in your writing. I've been a writing
instructor for many years and have been
writing myself for many more. I understand many of the issues
that we face as writers, and one of them
is perfectionism. We are like to
constantly rewrite the same chapter
over and over again. We spend a lot of time dreaming
and planning our novel, but never actually writing it. Progress stagnates, and as a result, our inspirations die. We need motivation to write, but it's sorely lacking
when we've been writing for so long and making
so little progress. It's a tough problem
to overcome alone, which is why I
created this course. I talk about perfectionism, my own struggles with it, and how overcame
it over the years. My goal for this course
is to help you better understand your anxieties
and perfectionism, and also help you overcome
those long term bad habits you've been building because of Having taught so many
courses on writing, helping thousands of writers and coached several
writers as well. I understand that this
is a problem that is best overcome with a
little bit of help. I highly encourage anybody
facing this problem to watch this course and be present
in the discussions below. As an active instructor, I'll be able to
answer any questions you may have as
soon as I see them. If you are interested in any of my writing courses or want
a coaching session with me, be sure to check out my profile. And if you're also interested
in seeing some of my work, here's the link to my website. So with all of that said, I do hope you enjoy this course, and I'll see you in
the very first lesson.
2. Recognizing Your Perfectionism: H. Hello, and welcome to the
very first lesson in overcoming your
perfectionism in writing. Now this first
lesson is all about recognizing the problems
in perfectionism, the flaws that you might have, and how they are
holding you back. Now let's talk about
over planning. Oplanning is one of the most common aspects of
perfectionism in writing. We spend a lot of our time imagining how our story will go. We like to picture the
characters, our favorite scenes. We want to picture
the world space itself and how to
immerse ourselves in it. More importantly, how
to immerse the reader. But in imagining all
of these aspects, all these different
scenes and characters, we like to spend a lot of time then in the planning phase, and that's structuring
the chapters, the scenes, how they all just
piece together. But spending too
much time there. We can create a plan that is too constricting for us to
actually realistically write. Simply because when we
are writing our stories, we like to have moments where we go off on a tangent or we create a scene where there's more opportunities
for better ideas. In short, we create a space for ourselves to lose
our creativity. We can go off on
a different path, but then our plan goes to
shambles because everything was delicately put in place to make sure that they
flowed into each other. So by breaking that flow, we break the plan for our story. Another aspect of perfectionism is only writing when
the inspiration hits. The problem though
with writing when only inspiration hits is you don't know when
inspiration will hit. The reason that this is
the more emotional side of writing is because
a lot of writers like to believe that
the best time to write is when inspiration
is at its peak. Simply because it's
easier to write, the ideas come to
mind a lot easier. The flow is a lot
easier to establish. Everything is easier. It's a powerful force
that helps any writers, and it's great when
inspiration hits. That's why a lot of writers believe that's the
best time to write. Because that's when
you're most comfortable, that's when the best
ideas seem to come out. Problem is you can't really predict when
inspiration will hit. You could hit one t and then not hit again
for several months. You could go through
a phase in your life where you're spending more
time on other things. By the time finally
inspiration hits again, you have to get back into
your routing project. And writing, again, after such a long period
of time without writing is very difficult, and you will encounter
many problems. Another aspect of writing
perfectionism is being stuck writing the same
first five chapters of your story for months. Again, very common because
a lot of writers like to correct mistakes or think of better ways
to write something. For some people, it's not
the first five chapters. Maybe it's only the first three or even the first chapter. Because this whole
dynamic of trying to get that first chapter right is what tends to keep
a lot of writers down. And this is perfectionism
in its purest form, not getting anywhere and
fussing over the small details, and it's the small
details that are holding you back from
writing or novel. So those are the most obvious
signs of perfectionism. The flaws, of course, is you have a stunted writing progress, it affects your mentality. It affects your
confidence in your story. Simply because you're
not making any progress, simply because your story doesn't seem to be
coming together. Simply because your story
isn't finished yet, and it's making you
feel bad as a writer. Perfectionism has its qualities, Perfectionism has its qualities, but that's not what
this course is about. This is, of course,
about perfectionism, holding you back as a writer. How it can immediately take
over your personality and your writing in
space and turn it into a hostile work environment. On where there's no progress, one where everything
you do is redone, simply because you're
not happy with it. This is not a fun
topic to talk about, because this is something
that holds you back from your passion and
making any progress. This is something that kills
a lot of writers because they spend too much time on
these little small details, and they start to believe that
they're not a good writer, or simply they don't
have a good story idea. A lot of writers give up on
writing because of this, and that's a lot of
wasted potential, a lot of great stories that
are thrown in the bin. But this is the very first step to overcoming these problems. Your project is to identify your perfectionism and
how it presents itself. Are you spending too
much time planning or on the very first chapters, redoing things over and over and over again without making
any real progress? In the next video, we'll be discussing the source
of your perfectionism, and it may not be
what you expect. O.
3. The Source of Perfectionism: Hello, and welcome
back to your course on overcoming your
perfectionism in writing. In this lesson, we're
going to be talking about the source
of perfectionism. Now, many people
like to believe that perfectionism is
based in ambition. Ambition simply encouraging you to do better, to be better, simply writing
better stories and hopefully making a bigger
impact on your readers. After all, we all want
to be good at something, especially with
something that we're passionate about,
such as writing. We want to make
sure that our story is really capturing
our imagination. We want to make sure that
our writing technique is excellent in the way that
it portrays our characters, and develops the
scenes and story. However, it's more likely that perfectionism does
not stem from this. Ambition is something that encourages people to
try and be better. It builds up one's
confidence and ego. In many ways, this is a
good thing if tempered. However, perfectionism stems
from our insecurities. There's a lot of insecurity
that comes with writing. A lot of writers
are introverted. This is something that almost
every writer recognizes, and introverts tend to have
a fear of many things. While there is
confidence in solitude, there's also fear that keeps
us from branching out, especially when it comes
to expressing ourselves. Fear of writing is no different because we have many fears
when we approach our stories, especially stories we
plan on publishing. Their fears of how others
will interpret our story or better still how they will interpret us through our story. For example, we are
afraid of being portrayed as a mediocre or
amateurish writer. The last thing we
want is readers or other writers to look at our writing and say
that's just no good. This fear of appearing mediocre can come down to
our writing style. It can come to the mistakes
we make in our writing. We're very afraid, of course, of contradicting
ourselves in our story. Because when we
contradict ourselves, we confuse the reader, and we show that
we are not paying attention to the writing
process as we should. We also lose confidence
in our story idea, simply because we are not making as much progress as
we thought we would. That means as the
story goes along, we're not getting as
far as we should, the story isn't clicking right. Suddenly we start to wonder, is our story really
that good of an idea? Or is it simply something that might be better in
another writer's hands, or is it a story idea
that is not good from the get go and should be left
behind for a better idea? All these anxieties build up
within us and we start to approach our writing with a lot more caution
and perfectionism. We spend so much time correcting
our writing because we want to make sure that our
writing is just right. We want to make sure
that our story is conveyed in the
most effective way. We want to make sure that
our clarity is there, so we don't confuse the reader. You can find perfectionism
all over the world. It's something that many people struggle with in many
different careers, not just the creative types, and definitely not just writers. It's something that
holds people back, keeps people hesitant
about what they're doing. And it all stems from
a lack of confidence. Now, I've spoken about
some of these anxieties, and some of them might
ring true for you. You may have recognized yourself in some of these hypotheticals. And that's not uncommon. As I said, this is a course geared towards overcoming
perfectionism. The best way to do that is to understand the source
of the problem. You can try to overcome
perfectionism by brute forcing yourself into writing faster
and getting more work done. But not understanding a source, you'll also have this anxiety throughout that process,
and it won't be fun. Now that we
understand that there is a source to our anxiety, a source to our perfectionism, We need to now overcome
that source before we start jumping into
our practical solutions. In the next lesson, I'm
going to be talking about how one overcomes
these anxieties. From then on, I'm going to go over some practical solutions. In the next lesson, I'll
be talking about that. For now, your project for this video is to understand the source
of your perfectionism. What's going on in
your mind and in your heart that is creating these bad habits that
are holding you back. I'll see you in the next video.
4. Overcoming Anxious Perfectionism: Hello, and welcome
back to your course and overcoming
perfectionism in writing. Now in this video, we're going
to be talking about how to overcome these anxieties that
have been holding us back. Now I know many out
there are wondering, how does one overcome something that has been plaguing
them for years. And it's not something
that's done overnight, but it's certainly something
one can do right away. Anxieties are all
based on fears and fears are based on what could happen,
what could go wrong. Simply put, it's about imagining
the worst case scenario, and then suffocating that
and you're subconscious, so you can try and overcome it by using things
like perfectionism, to make you a better, more rounded person, to make
you greater as a writer. Cause surely then,
you won't have to worry about something bad
happening in the future. Now, you can't
predict the future. That's the important
point I want to make. Your anxieties are
trying to tell you that you are not worthy
of what is to come, you're not ready for
what is to come. That means you go out of
your way to push yourself badly into becoming a
better, more capable person. All it does, though,
is leave you as a nervous wreck and not
making any progress. As a writer, you
want to make sure that your story is fantastic. You want to make
sure it's unique. You want to make sure the
writing style is on point. You want to make yourself into this masterwork
of a writer, and you want to make sure that your writing is simply a
product of your genius. Of course, the reality
of the situation is that you're not going to be writing masterpieces
left right and center. You're not going to be
churning out novels that could put worn
piece to shame. And I know that's
probably broken quite a few dreams
and just saying that. And some of you are probably already arguing with
me saying, why not? Or simply put, you as a writer, if you are a beginner, you are delving into something
that isn't easy. So if you think that writing
is all about putting out a story and thinking
it's going to be a huge hit because you are
that good of a writer. The reality of the
situation is that whatever message that you want to write has already been
written several times. Nothing is unique in writing. Nothing really. Every
character trope has already been done several
times over in several stories, in several genres
by several writers. We only need to look deep
enough to find them all, and some of them are so
obvious that it's pretty much impossible to create something that will pass off as unique. There isn't a perfect sentence, a perfect paragraph,
a perfect book. So no matter how good
you write something, there's always going to
be somebody who says, it's okay, but it's not perfect. It's going to be somebody
that says it's awful. It's going to be
somebody that says it's the worst book
they've ever read. Be being subjective means
that it needs to cater to that specific reader's
tastes and personality. And we are very
unique as people. And if you are a
beginner with writer, that means you will make
mistakes in your writing. You're still getting
used to the process. You will have
character interactions that simply don't sound right. You will have scenes
that don't hit or as impactful as you
thought they would be. Of course, that means that you're going to
struggle to write your first draft before you
ever write your first book. With this dose of reality, I'm also going to tell you
that this is perfectly okay. There are many advantages
to all of these facts. First of all, the fact that everything has been done means that you don't have
to worry about taking ideas from other writers. There are many tropes
that have been used from the three friends to the anti villains to the
hero that becomes a villain, to the villain that
becomes a hero. There are so many messages and themes that have
already been done, don't steal or
keep your promises or sacrifice yourself
for the greater good, it's all been done before. So that means what will truly make your story unique is you. The combination of things that
you include in your story, the way you present them, the flow of your story, that will make it
unique enough to stand out among every other story that has already been written. And the fact that there
are no perfect sentences or perfect paragraphs
and books out there means that you
shouldn't be fussed over the small details as you
think you should be. The small mistakes
that you leave behind as you write
your first draft are things that you can
correct when you go through your book again
in the editing phase. As I say with a
lot of my writers, don't get stuck in
the first draft because when you get stuck, you start to fuel
your anxieties. Again, as you fuss over perfectionism and
your small little details, your head is thinking, I
have so much progress that I'm pushing aside just to
focus on this small problem. Many writers out there who
understand this fact have little to no anxiety when it comes to their
writing process. Because the story
isn't finished yet. They're not concerned with what has happened in the
chapter they've just written because they have yet to write
the last chapter. Yes, this is a bull headed approach when it
comes to writing. You're pushing forward leaving so many mistakes of
the debris behind you, but that's something
that can be cleaned up. You've still got so much
to do ahead of you, and that's a lot more difficult. So don't stress about your
ideas being great and unique. You make it great and unique. Everything's been done before, but you're going
to do it your way. And that's what makes your story equal to those that are published in the same
genre out there. Second is, don't fuss over the small details because the small details
are easy to fix. The first draft isn't
easy to finish. Focus on pushing ahead, keep a schedule,
encourage yourself, but make sure that you're making progress in that department and finish your book before you start going back and
correcting other mistakes. Thirdly, if your story has a
place among other stories, then there is a place for
you among other writers. If you have an anxiety
about what people may think about
your story, well, I can tell you for
a fact that there are plenty of books out there, many which are poorly written
with spelling mistakes, grammar problems, and
the plot is just rank. But there are plenty
of readers out there who say that that is
their favorite book. Writing is subjective. You're not writing to
impress everybody. You're writing a story
that's for yourself. Once that's done, there's more than a few readers out there who are going to enjoy it. Now your project is simply to come to grips with that reality. In coming to grips of reality, you'll overcome these anxieties. It's not something
you'll be able to overcome completely in one day, but certainly if you
constantly remind yourself this and you push
forward with your writing, you'll start to see the
progress you're making, and that in itself will boost your confidence in
your writing as well. In the next lesson, I'm
going to be giving you some solutions to put into practice to help
you do just that.
5. Practical Solutions: Hello, and welcome back to overcoming your
perfectionism in writing. Now, this video, I'm going to be talking about some
practical solutions. Bear in mind, if you do want to take full advantage
of these solutions, you can do it whether you
feel absolutely certain about overcoming your anxieties when it comes to perfectionism. But it's also a way to move forward while
you practice that. Now, one of the most
obvious practical solutions is simply pushing forward
and pushing forward in the sense of not looking
at your writing so closely as you write it and instead focusing on getting
that word count. That word count is
an excellent goal as it marks your progress and
builds your confidence. And yes, your product, as I said before, your
story, I should say, is going to be a lot less clean than it would if you
were to take things slowly. But the benefit of
pushing forward despite the flaws that you may leave behind that later
need to be corrected, is that it has
that mental boost, that sense of progress. This also comes down to
another practical solution, which is writing, whether
you feel like it or not. There are going to
be days when you have the time to write, but the mood isn't quite there. If you're not feeling that
inspiration that you usually feel about writing and
want to do something else, and as a result, you're
going to fall back in your deadline or
your word count goal, and you may think that's okay. It's all right to miss a
few days, and maybe it is. But to be confident about your writing means to
understand that you as a writer need to be ready to write whether the moment
is perfect or not. Whether you feel like it or not. It's all about
training your mind, whether it's uncomfortable or not in order to make progress. So those days where
you're feeling a bit indifferent about
your writing and want to do something else are great opportunities to
better yourself as a writer. And that way you can
approach writing in uncomfortable situations and
not just comfortable ones, which may help you if you
start writing your novel, and you find that the energy
immediately depletes. So whether you're
uncomfortable or not, you'll still be able
to reach that word count because you
committed to that writing. This brings me to one
of my favorite topics, which is writing Sprints. Writing Sprints was
something that I wasn't too sure about when I
first started writing. I was like many other
writers out there, only writing when
I felt like it. It was hard to get my motivation to write on days when
I didn't feel like it. But writing sprints
offer a challenge, an initial burst, a deadline in that moment that can help
motivate you to write. So writing sprints means
taking the time to write, but then taking that
exact same time for a break after you've written and then getting
right back into it. A comfortable number I
like to work with is 20 20 minutes of
concentrated writing. And once that 20 minutes is up, get my hand off the keyboard
and do something else, because I need to take that
break in order to say, Okay, this is now the
time to stop writing. And so that way you better train your mind when it needs
to start writing. It's an easier way of getting into writing sessions without that slow build up until that ideas and inspiration
and that flow really hit. So, I recommend this to a
lot of writers out there. It is something that
is a bit different. Nobody likes to time their
writing sessions and do all sorts of things with it as if it was some intense game. But in itself, writing sprints
has helped many writers, including me, and I can
highly recommend it. The final practical solution I offer is also take a look
at the planning process. While these solutions will definitely help you out
in the writing process, the planning process
in itself is also another way you can really
stress your perfectionism. So what you want to do
then is destress it. By that, I mean vague planning. Getting carried away
with planning is one of the problems of perfectionism I've previously talked about. But to get around it is to make your planning
vague enough that it gives you the
creative freedom to write your story
in that moment. So during the writing process, you're not looking
at your plan and seeing how many times
you went against it. Because after all,
you can follow a plan and it may work out
a lot of the times, but when it doesn't, it
can jeopardize your story. Vague planning
doesn't allow this. Vague planning only stresses the key points that are
important to your story. Think of it much like landmarks. Landmarks help you gauge how far you are from
your destination. You may be tracing through different landmarks to
get to your destination, but you're not sure how
that's going to go. There could be hills
in the way, dense, forests, rivers,
that sort of thing. And that's the same
way that you should approach your planning
process in writing. You're not sure of the
hills and rivers you might have to cross in order
to reach that landmark. So by having a very
constrictive plan, you force yourself to go through difficult terrain and
sometimes hit dead ends, and you're not sure how you're going to reach that landmark. Vague planning
allows you to adapt and overcome these obstacles
that you may face. And that brings us
to the project of this video, which
is to take note, first of all of these
practical solutions that you could put in place, and also to come
up with your own. Depending on your
writing process, it might be very different
from a lot of other writers. So you might be looking
at your writing, you might be looking
at visual interests, for example, a visual board to help you better
picture your story. You may better look
at your inspirations. You may attend to these inspirations at times
when you are feeling low, and the ideas simply
aren't there. Of course, those
are very specific solutions that one might use, and that really does depend on the writer, does depend on you. But the solutions
that I've talked about here are very general. Any writer can make use of them. So if you keep them in mind and keep your own
personal weapons, your own solutions in mind, you should have an easier
time putting into practice these solutions and making
progress in your story. With that said in
the next video, I'll be talking
about how to break this long term habit
of perfectionism. It's not something
that's easily done, so we're going to talk about
that in the next video. I'll see you then by for now.
6. Conclusion: Hello, and welcome
back to your course on overcoming perfectionism
in writing. In this last video,
I'm going to be talking about where we're
going to go from here, how to overcome your long
term habit of perfectionism, and some added
information on what you can do to help boost
your writing skills. But let's first talk about
breaking this long term habit. Now, perfectionism is something that is deep rooted
in a lot of people. You're not going to
be able to overcome it just by the end
of this course. It may take weeks, months, and maybe even years, especially if you've been
a writer for many years. Perfectionism is something that you've built a habit of doing. So the more often
you've done it, the harder it is to get rid of. However, you do start
to see an improvement as you apply these techniques
and solutions I discussed. You need to constantly
recheck what you're doing, your inspirations,
your planning, the way you're writing, and
the way you approach writing. I understand this from
a lot of my students, that there are a lot of
writers out there who are very concerned with every little
detail in their novel. Their story becomes
their pride and joy, so every little imperfection
needs to be eliminated. But of course, you can't round out everything so perfectly. There's always a better way to do things, and
that's the problem. When you understand this,
you understand that there is no way to
make a perfect story. There is no way you can block out every little
imperfection in your novel. So with that in mind, you
realize there's no point in progressing because you'll
never be able to progress. And that jeopardizes a
lot of great stories with a lot of writers out there who have
so much potential. You do need to check
yourself at times. Because if you don't,
it's very easy to slip back into
these old habits. It's very easy to be stuck in those initial chapters
that you've written, constantly correcting
and rewriting the same paragraph
over and over again. There's only so many
times you can read the same chapter before
it drives you mad. If there's anything
that you should apply your perfectionistic
tendencies towards, it's towards building
this foundation of confident writing. And you can't do that
if you're constantly looking for flows in the
way you write things. You can also overcome the problem of only writing
when you feel like it or when inspiration hits
because you never know when you might feel like it or whether inspiration
is there or not. So this will also boost your progress and your
attitude towards writing. One metaphor I like to use a lot when I'm talking
about creating a novel is approach it the same way you
would building a house. You build the foundations, you build the frame
of the house, and then you start to add
the walls, the ceiling, you start to add the details
that make it a home. However, if every piece that
you add to the house is done to the point of finishing it without the rest of
the house being finished, not only is it slow going, but damage is bound to happen
to those little perfections you've made along the way as you improve and
build the house. Now, before this course ends, I do want to talk
about another solution that all writers can
take advantage of. And this is a solution to all the problems that
you may be facing. Whether you have problems of your writing or you're
running out of ideas, or you're looking
for somebody to encourage you to write more or to have better practices in place when you start writing. I'm talking about
getting a writing coach. I've been a writing coach
for many years now, helping other writers create
the novel of their dreams. And that means giving them a fresh perspective
on their story. So whether you're
struggling with writer's block or you're
not sure about your ideas, or you need some
professional advice to get you back on track. That's what my coaching
program is all about. I have a profile on the
Service super Pier, which works in
collaboration with Skills. If you look on my
Skillshare profile, for example, you can
find it at the very top. And you'll be able to schedule a coaching session with me where we discuss your novel and any problems you
might be facing. Getting a fresh perspective
from a like minded writer is a great way to overcome any obstacles you
might be facing, or if you just need
that extra inspiration to approach your novel. And I understand that a lot of coaching out there
isn't accessible, which is why I made
my coaching program affordable and easy to schedule. So any writer out there looking to approach
their novel with a fresh mindset and professional
advice guiding them. This is the coaching
program for you. And if you're interested, I look forward to seeing you at
our very first session. And that brings us to
the end of this course. If you enjoyed, be sure to check out my other
writing courses. I talk about everything from fantasy writing to
science fiction to overcoming niche
obstacles that you may be facing on
your writing journey. And if you wish to
discuss the problems you might be facing
in perfectionism, please leave me a comment
in the discussions below. I am an active instructor, which means you'll
receive a response from me as soon as I see it. Once again, thank
you for watching this course and Das
always happy writing.
Matthew Dewey
