Is Perfectionism Killing Your Voice?
I’ll confess. I do a few things really well. One is sleep. At bedtime, I can be out in 2 minutes or less. I’m the envy of my insomniac friends and lover. I flip over to my side from my back and presto! My body knows it is sleep time.
The other thing I do really well is write. NOW WAIT! I’m not saying I’m a really good writer. What I’m saying I do really well is write…as in the words come forth and I don’t have to “toss and turn” over them. Honestly I think that some of this comes from writing poetry since age 7 with no intention of ever becoming published. For me, writing a poem has always been an attempt to capture a moment. It was, and still is, a form of journaling for me. And I rarely edit. If I have to over edit a poem, it becomes more self-conscious and generally not much better.
The same, for me, is true with blogging. I do not wrestle. I write when I feel compelled and the words generally spew forth. Yes, I hit the backspace button and will delete or add a line here or there, but for these posts, they are generally done in 10 minutes. Finding a great photo takes longer.
Why? Because I know it will NEVER be perfect. Nevah evah. The idea is to share a thought with a reader or two. Maybe more. Hopefully it will resonate. If not, that’s ok. Moment saved. For what? I know not. But, while I get excited by a large number of readers, I blog for the passion of it and am not defeated by a day of 5 versus 60. I know there are a lot of phenomenal writers competing for your attention because they are competing for mine.
Writing for clients is much more labor intensive because there are little or none of my own feelings in a post. Thoughts don’t flow from my brain to my fingertips.
Perfectionism kills authenticity. Let your words flow and fly, people! We want to know who you really are.
2 Responses to “Is Perfectionism Killing Your Voice?”
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I find that I write messages to myself that I may not have recieved before. Lots of things become clearer to me as I write; my writing takes me into perspectives that I may have missed otherwise.
Thing is with me, is that the language I use to tell myself things is very, very dense and compact. After all, I know what I am saying so from a purely personal point of view there is little need of an edit.
But we do not exist alone – and all forms of communication will touch and affect other forms of communication. So it is that I find myself sharing what has been shared with me. The edit, and it is a necessary one, consists of unpacking the zip files of my compacted musings and allowing paragraphs to be unpacked from sentences. I employ analogies and similies as the branches from which my meanings can hang, blinking in the unaccustomed daylight and stretching out their stiff limbs.
I have become far more clued up on where to begin the great unpacking and how to add much more simplicity and, I hope, clarity to my writing. For this I owe a great deal to Josie whose unenviable task it was to shift me out of old habits and realise that people might actually want to understand what I was blithering on about.
So yes, I edit, but the content stays the same. However the structure gained by my edits allows much more scope for understanding. At least that is what I am told, and for now, that’s pretty dinky : ) LF
Larry, I’m sorry it took so long to reply to this.
What a beautiful metaphor (or is it analogy…I can’t recall): “I employ analogies and similes as the branches from which my meanings can hang, blinking in the unaccustomed daylight and stretching out their stiff limbs.”
I hope to one day really be able to improve my writing. I actually meet with Kelly Diels next week for a blog review and hope to get some help in clarifying my voice and my goals for the blog.
I’m glad you are a visitor! And my long-distance friend…