You're Not a Perfectionist, You're Afraid

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Welcome to the Inside Creative Writing podcast, the weekly discussion of craft and technique for writers of fiction and creative nonfiction. And now here's your host, writer and educator Brad Reed. Episode 22. Today, we're talking about the root of so much of the resistance we face as writers, perfectionism. Where does it come from? How does it affect our writing?

And how can we overcome it? And we're back with another episode of the Inside Creative Writing podcast. My name is Brad Reed and I am thrilled that you're here with us this week. Before we jump into today's topic, a couple of things to know about. First of all, you can follow me over on Twitter. I'm at Brad Reed writes where I tweet about writing, the writing life and often share little bits of news and information that keeps me inspired to write.

So I'd love to connect with you there on Twitter at Brad Reed writes. I also wanted to remind you about the website where you'll find show notes for this episode as well as others and other resources related to the podcast. You can find all that at Brad Reed writes dot com. And finally, I want to thank the members of my Patreon team for the support and motivation they give me, not just for the podcast, but also in my own writing. If you're interested in being part of the Patreon team, just go to Brad Reed writes dot com and click on that Patreon link for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get access to behind the scenes videos that I post a few times a week that give insight about the podcast and into my own writing process.

For just a little bit more, you get access to exclusive real-time revision videos where you can watch in real time as I implement many of the strategies and techniques from the show in my own work in progress. It's a great companion piece to the podcast and we're having a lot of fun putting these together. There's even an option for Patreon team members to have some of their work, some of their writing workshopped by me and other members of the writing room.

Understanding Perfectionism

So I hope you'll check that out and help keep us help us keep the podcast growing and improving all the time. So with that, let's get into today's topic, perfectionism. Today's show is going to be part exploration and honestly, part confession, I think.

So before we get too deeply into our topic, I want to take a moment to redefine what we mean by perfectionism because it's a concept that's loaded with so much negative connotation and misunderstanding that we need to have a clear idea of this before we explore it. So inherent in the word perfectionism is, of course, the root word perfection, which is something many of us strive for, but something that we can all hopefully admit is completely unattainable, right? This idea of perfection. I'm not sure there even is such a thing as the perfect short story, the perfect novel, or really the perfect any kind of art. By its very nature, art is imperfect. In fact, I recently attended my youngest daughter's college graduation, and the keynote speaker there was an animator and designer for Pixar.

And one of the things he talked about was how they have to intentionally put imperfections into their animation so that it doesn't look too perfect, right? Too unbelievable. The computers are so good at what they do that they're capable of creating this perfection, right? These perfect lines, perfect curves, perfect color blends, but that's not what looks good on the screen. It comes out too cold, too precise.

So in other words, there's something about perfection that inhibits art and expression. I'm getting ahead of myself here a little bit. So let's back up and return to how we misunderstand the idea of someone being a perfectionist.

So calling yourself a perfectionist seems to imply that you are, in fact, capable of creating something perfect. If only you had enough time, enough talent, enough great ideas, enough coaching, you could create the perfect piece of art. Now, this is kind of how the perfectionist mind works. And I know this because I, up till recently, would have called myself a perfectionist.

Now, intellectually, we know that it's not possible to create this perfect piece of art, but somewhere in our guts, deep down inside our insecurities and fears, we feel like we should be able to, right? If we just worked hard enough, just got good enough, we should be able to create this perfect piece of art. Or maybe more accurately, we feel like that's what other people expect from us, right? It's not so much that we feel like we can create something perfect, but we feel this overwhelming pressure from those that we're trying to impress, from our readers, our editors, our families, our friends, to create something approaching perfection.

So for our purposes today, we're going to redefine the meaning of the word perfectionist. And our new definition has everything to do with the word fear, F-E-A-R, fear. You see, perfectionism isn't about our inability to create a perfect piece of writing. We know that's impossible. Perfectionism is really about revealing our inability to create something perfect to others, to our readers, to our editors, our beta readers, our families, our friends. Perfectionism is not some out-of-control obsession with creating perfect art.

Perfectionism is actually fear that others will see the flaws and imperfections in what we create. In other words, to put it bluntly, perfectionism is fear. And that's how I want to talk about it in today's show when we explore perfectionism. Perfectionism is fear. Steven Pressfield, in his great book, The War of Art, describes fear as an absolutely necessary part of writing success. He asks, are you paralyzed with fear?

That's a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

So if you're paralyzed with fear, it's a good sign. It shows you what you have to do. So that's from Steven Pressfield. If you haven't read The War of Art, I encourage you to pick up a copy and read it often. You can find a link to that in the show notes at BradReedWrites. com if you want to pick up a copy of that great book.

So have you called yourself a perfectionist before? I know I have. And I used to wear it as a kind of badge of honor. I'd announce myself as a perfectionist and kind of get a little spark from what I used to think it meant. I mean, it meant that I cared about my work, right?

So much so that I would work it and rework it and rework it and rework it until it was the best that it could be. I mean, that's what a good artist does, right? That's what I felt like I was talking about when I said I was a perfectionist. And being a quote-unquote perfectionist, it was really easy to slip into a kind of judgmentalism about other people's work. I mean, I could easily spot imperfections in others' writings, right? There's that unnecessary adverb they should have gotten rid of or there's that inadvertent typo they missed or that glaring plot hole, right?

How could they leave that in there? How could they not see that? And through this process, I began to feel better about myself through this comparison to other people's work using this perfectionist nature that I have.

Now, I could tell myself I wouldn't make such mistakes because I was a quote-unquote perfectionist. In my mind, I had almost come to conflate the term perfectionist with professional. Of course, professionals were perfectionists, right? That's how they got to be professionals through being perfectionists.

Now, if you're bristling a little bit of all this, that's good, right? That's where I'm headed with this. So my journey as a perfectionist has been a long road for me. And as I look back at a life of missed opportunities, I can now see it clearly not as perfectionism, but as fear, plain and simple fear.

So here comes the true confession time of this week's podcast. I have written a stack of short stories in my life, but I can count on one hand the number of people who have actually read them. And that's not from them not wanting to read them. It's from me not giving them the opportunity to read them. I can count on just a few fingers how many of those short stories I've actually sent out into the world to try to get published. And even then, when I did submit them, I sent them in not as an act of courage, but almost as a kind of giving up.

Oh, I'll never get back to fixing this story, I think. So I might as well send it in somewhere and see what happens. And that way, when the rejections that were guaranteed to come from that kind of submission came in, they only served to feed my perfectionism and fear even more. See, I tell myself, those stories weren't near ready to send out. I knew that. I've written three full screenplays that have never seen the light of day, never sent anywhere.

Never really even workshopped them with other writers. I've written two books and a novella too. None of them have I ever attempted to publish other than I had a half-hearted attempt to self-publish one that was only available for a week or two before I pulled it down. Why is that? Well, I tell myself, because they weren't perfect yet, right? That's what I tell myself.

I was, after all, a perfectionist, right? And I saw that as kind of a part of a long and noble tradition of writers, right? This label that I could put on myself as a kind of excuse. And it's only recently that I've come to see the real root of perfectionism as fear. Overwhelming, debilitating, crushing Doesn't come from. How does perfectionism affect our writing?

The Roots of Perfectionism

And finally, and maybe most importantly, how can we begin to overcome it if we have these perfectionist or these fear based tendencies? So first of all, where does perfectionism come from? Now, I am not a psychologist, and there's actually been a lot of study into why people become perfectionists, why they're wired this way.

Now I have done some research and a lot of self-reflection about it. So, but take what I'm going to say here with a grain of salt because I'm not a psychologist. Psychologists' definition of perfectionism is pretty much in keeping with our initial discussion of it here as being a manifestation of fear.

Here's what they say. Perfectionists are driven by a fear of failure. That's the common agreement in the profession.

But where does this fear of failure come from? A lot of research is showing that it is either inherited or passed down from our parents, which leads us to the old kind of nurture versus nature debate. Are we perfectionists because we are wired that way in our genetics? Or are we perfectionists because of the environment in which we were raised? And I'm not sure the answer to that question is actually all that important for us as writers to figure out. What really matters is that we recognize that for whatever reason, we are wired that way.

And once we recognize that, to begin to take steps to overcome it. Now I found that it can really help to spend some time reflecting on how you got these perfectionist or these fear-based tendencies. In my own life, for example, I was raised in a very religious home, in a very conservative religion. And this religion really emphasized the attainment of perfection.

So whether or not I was programmed for perfectionism by my genetics or not, it's pretty clear that my environment would have led me there regardless. So think about the role models in your life. Parents, aunts, uncles, friends, anyone who you would consider to have had a profound impact on how you define success and risk. Would you describe them as perfectionists? Looking back after all these years, can you see how they might have been motivated, at least partially, by a fear of failure rather than desire to achieve a goal? As soon as we can begin to see the why behind how we're wired, the sooner we can begin to function not on autopilot, kind of obeying our ingrained programming, but through intention and choice.

Our podcast a few weeks ago was about mindfulness meditation, and it's honestly through this kind of meditation that I've discovered just how preoccupied I am with perfectionism and with what others think of me. This realization alone has given me a kind of freedom to work against those natural instincts and challenge myself to overcome them. If you think this might help you explore your perfectionist side, I invite you to listen back to that episode and explore some other resources about mindfulness meditation and how it can unlock the way your mind runs when it's on autopilot, which is a vast majority of the time.

Impact on Writing

So let's move on to how does perfectionism, or what we're now going to call fear of failure, affect our writing? In fact, maybe a better question is how doesn't it affect our writing? A fear of failure clouds our ability to choose the right stories to tell. It tells us to worry about what's popular and what's selling, what do people like and what do people expect me to write about, rather than allow us to tap into the stories that scare us a little bit, the stories that might upset people, the stories that might be hard to tell. A fear of failure sometimes causes us to be entirely unable to write. Some people call this writer's block, a topic we're going to tackle in a future episode, but its root is a fear of failure, a desire for perfection.

As soon as I write a paragraph, a sentence, or a single word, I've ruined my chances of perfection, of getting it right. That's what the fear of failure mentality tells us. Every sentence becomes a wrestling match between our ability, our desire, and some impossible ideal in our heads. How could anybody write with that kind of drama going on inside our heads? Even when we're writing and the words are coming, the fear of failure still looms. Have you ever written a really creative, interesting piece of figurative language only to delete it in favor of maybe a more cliched one because of the fear of just kind of being too out there, too strange, or too unexpected?

That's perfectionism. That's that fear of failure creeping into our writing and robbing us of our voice, of our unique take on the world, of our ability to maybe shock and surprise our audience. And maybe the most pernicious effect that fear of failure has on our writing is failing to finish our work. It's that voice that comes to you as you near completion that either begins to tell you it's just not good enough or that the new idea you just thought of is a much better idea and you should abandon your current work in progress for it right away. Or perhaps you do push through and actually finish, maybe even through multiple revisions and all. Fear of failure is the thing that keeps your manuscript in a file on your computer or sitting patiently in a stack of printed papers in a drawer.

I need to go through it again, you'll tell yourself. It's not perfect yet, so nobody can see it. Fear of failure invades every single aspect of our writing, undermining it at every turn. This is why it is so vital to recognize it for what it is. This is why Steven Pressfield's insight into what perfectionism really is, is so important to your writing life.

Overcoming Perfectionism

But before we get there, lastly, how can we overcome this? Now, there's no one way to overcome fear of failure, to overcome perfectionism. If it's truly debilitating, you might actually want to seek some counseling and talk to somebody about it. See if you can work through where it comes from and how it manifests in your life.

But for most of us, the first step in overcoming it is in recognizing it for what it actually is, right? It's a simple fear of failure. And then learn to lean into that fear. Use that fear as a sign for where you need to go next. Is there a story you're scared to write? Maybe it'll offend people or maybe you don't feel like there's a market for it, or it's too radical, it's too out there.

That probably means that it's exactly what you should be writing. Are you staring at a blank screen, frozen and unable to get words on the page? Well then, write the crappiest, most terrible scene that you can write. You can always delete it if you need to, but it'll probably be exactly the thing you need to write in order to get the juices flowing again because you've leaned in to that fear. You've pressed into it. Have you finished a story, a memoir, a novel, but have yet to share it with beta readers or query an agent or self-publish it?

Take some time to explore within yourself the reason why. Is it really not yet ready yet or is it really a fear that your writing won't be that great, that people won't love it, that they might even be disappointed in what you've written? If it's the latter, that's fear working as a signpost for your next step. Send it out, share it, publish it. If you're to take just one thing from today's podcast, if we could boil it down to a simple, memorable phrase, it would be this. Perfectionism is just fear and fear is just a signpost leading you to your next step.

I encourage you to see fear differently, not as a weakness, but as a kind of advisor leading you in the right direction for your art. And lastly, I want you to eradicate the word perfectionist from your vocabulary. It's a made up term that only serves to hide the truth about what's going on. We can fool ourselves into thinking of perfectionism as a kind of positive thing, but if we replace it with fear of failure, we begin to see it for what it really is and we put ourselves in the position to make a choice to either run from it and live in fear or run into that fear and possibly have a great adventure with it. One last thought before we wrap up today. There is a difference between pushing through fear and settling for less than you're capable of.

There's a temptation to put our work out too early, especially after we've slogged through an entire rough draft and are feeling accomplished and exhausted. People who suffer from extreme fear of failure revise and revise and revise as an excuse for avoiding possible failure. No one can judge their work if they never see it, right? If it's never done.

But people on the other end of the spectrum, those who think they are better than they are, often send out drafts or self-publish their work much too early. This is about finding that happy medium and truly tapping into your psyche to tell you when a work is ready for the light of day. Once you realize that you're being motivated more by fear than by improving the quality of your work, it's time to get it out into the world. It's time to lean into that fear. We've actually got two wise words for you today, both of them having to do with perfectionism. Our first comes from Brene Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston who studies perfectionism.

Healthy Striving vs Perfectionism

She wrote a book called The Gifts of Imperfection, Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are. Here's what Professor Brown says. Understanding the difference between healthy striving and perfectionism is critical to laying down the shield and picking up your life. Research shows that perfectionism hampers success. In fact, it's often the path to depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis. I love how she describes perfectionism as a shield in this, right?

Where a shield can be a positive, protective thing, she describes it as though it's an impediment to of what we're actually trying to create when we write. We're not trying to create perfection. Perfection is boring, predictable, sterile. What we're creating are beautiful versions of brokenness. We're telling stories of characters who are broken as they try to put themselves back together again. Why not give ourselves that same benefit and let some of our own beautiful brokenness show through in our writing?

Weekly Challenge

Today's topic doesn't lend itself quite as well to a weekly challenge as past topics have. There's no specific technique to try, no writing prompt to help inspire your next story. But I think there's still a kind of natural challenge that grows out of it. This week, I encourage you to take at least one step toward fear or into fear. What that looks like is entirely up to you. Have you been thinking about a story idea that you fear will have no market or might even offend people?

Start to write it. Have you been fearful to reach out to a mentor to ask for help? Take that step and reach out. Have you been fearful to join a writing group and share some of what you're working on? Well then, research a writing group and get involved. Or have you been reluctant to show your work in progress to a beta reader?

Go ahead and send off a copy today and see what comes of it. Or maybe you've been revising and revising and revising the same story over and over again. Perhaps it's time to send it out into the world and see what happens.

So our weekly challenge for this week is basically this. Do something with your writing that scares you. I'd love to hear about what you do with the challenge this week. You can shoot me an email at bradreid at bradreidwrites. com. You can tweet me at bradreidwrites.

Or better yet, leave us a voicemail and you just might hear your voice on a future podcast. If you miss that number, you can always click the Talk to Us link on the website at bradreidwrites. com.

So that's going to do it for us this week. Until next time, please leave us a review over on iTunes and share the show with your writer friends and writer groups. It's a great way to support the show and helps ensure that we can keep producing them for you every week.

So until next week, remember the best way to improve your craft is by writing. That's what I'm off to go do and I hope you're off to do the same. Let's get some words on paper this week and we'll meet up again next week for another episode of the Inside Creative Writing Podcast. Thanks for listening to the Inside Creative Writing Podcast with your host, writer and educator, Brad Reed. We'll be back next week.