Perfection – it’s overrated. Often even paralysing.

It’s futile to your productivity and your progress.

Aiming for perfection stops us from finishings things. It stops us from putting out our ideas into the world to be enjoyed by others.

Creatives are often perfectionists.

If it’s not perfect, it often stays hidden in the depths of their documents or in notebooks stashed in the back of cupboards. Lonely, neglected and forgotten.

But perfection is subjective.

To us, a piece of work is never really going to be finished. It can always be improved, modifying, edited, tweaked.

Writers are often their worst self-critic.

It’s so easy to spend hours, days, weeks, even months editing a chapter aiming for perfection but never being happy with it.  There comes a point where you have to say enough is enough.

Your work has to be good enough because ‘perfect’ is subjective and whilst one person might love it, another could hate it. Have you seen some of the reviews for the first Lee Child book? Even he can’t please every reader.

There comes a point where you have to be honest with yourself and make a decision to finish. Then to share it with the world. Then move on to the next project and never look back.

Just aim for each article, each blog post, each novel to be better than the one that came before it. Learn from your mistakes, improve your techniques, work on your weaknesses, highlight your strengths.

Perfection is an obstacle that prevents creatives from achieving their dreams. Quality is important but quantity is too.

It’s so hard to stand out in the world today that we as writers, authors, creatives, require a multitude of products on the market to be noticed and to make a living.

That’s not to say we put out crap without an ounce of editing, or create a cover design with zero designer skills. We hire professionals to help us with these things.

We write our best work. We self-edit. Proofread. Then hand it over to the pros.

Next, we proofread again.

Finally, we let go of our pride and joy, forget it, and start over with another idea.

You need to make a decision about your process, mould it to suit your schedule and your needs.

11 QUICK STEPS  I USE TO GETTING THE NOVEL WRITTEN

1. Brainstorm your story.
2. Write the first draft.
3. Tweak the story line and subplots;
4. Make sure all the questions posed are answered.
5. Tie up any loose ends.
6. Proofread for grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
7. Hire an editor.
8. Hire a cover designer.
9. Get it formatted (or use Vellum).
10.Hit publish.
11. Start again.

An easy process. But you do need a process otherwise you end up going over and over your manuscript, never finishing. Never moving on.

We all need to move on. Move forwards and stop being stuck in one place regardless of what we are doing. It is the only way that we are going to grow into the writers we dream to be.

An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail.
– Dr. Edwin Land