The Writing Life
While I like the sentiment of “failure is not an option,” I can’t agree with the statement in its entirety. Failure happens, sometimes because of something I’ve done or failed to do and sometimes because of circumstances entirely out of my control. When it does, how will I stand up under it if I live life by the credo “failure is not an option”?
If you’re a perfectionist – if you live with the reality of perfectionism long enough – you’ll realize the only way to win against perfectionism is never to surrender to it. If you surrender to it, you’ll accomplish little, if anything, but, if you fight it every single day, you just might make something. No, it might not be anything good, grand, or perfect, but it will be something, and it could be the very something that someone else needs.
I’m sometimes asked how I deal with failure or how I keep moving forward when I struggle with perfectionism. One of the tricks is to keep a forward mindset as well as an other-minded one. The other, to borrow a phrase from Paul Jarvis, is to “view everything as an experiment.”
When I was a kid, my mom gave me motherly wisdom as most mothers do: “To have friends you have to be friendly; if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all; you have to get messy to make art.” All true statements and all not readily absorbed, especially the first and third ones. To the first, I was a shy kid who struggled to make friends, and, to the second, I hated to get messy. I loved art, but I hated to get paint or glue all over my hands. Perhaps I already was exhibiting an inclination toward perfectionism.
One of my favorite musicians is a perfectionist. I know this because, in my sporadic attempts to be a dedicated fan, I spent some time reading this musician’s comments about one of his albums. He described himself as a perfectionist musician, then stated his work was never finished, only abandoned.
[Read more…] about Of Perfectionists and Abandoning Projects
Today’s post is courtesy of Michael Schechter.
I have the grammatical skills of the average chimpanzee. No, that’s not fair, I’m insulting chimps. It’s not something that comes naturally and when it comes to my writing, it’s not my highest priority. Regardless of this deficiency, I write. I write to become a slightly better chimp. I write because I have something I want to say. I write because I want to find my voice and by using it, I seek to make it stronger.
[Read more…] about Don’t Be Afraid To Write If You Don’t Write Right