Your First Draft Doesn't Have to be Perfect...but Mine Does

 

Two weeks ago, I had to draft an article for class (the same class that enforces this blog, in fact). The article could be about anything, any length, so long as it fit the submission requirements of the website I chose.

Easy enough. I wrote the first draft that Tuesday night. It only took half an hour, and it wasn't due until our in-class workshop that Thursday, so for the next two days I was coasting, right?

Alas, dear reader, this is not right.

You see, I suffer from this condition called "perfectionism" and it's really debilitating, so even though I had already technically completed my assignment, that Wednesday I settled in for a two-and-a-half-hour editing session.

Usually, I adore editing. As you can read about here, finding flaws comes naturally to me and fixing them feels the same as falling into clean bedsheets. That Wednesday, however, I was frozen by a perfectionism "flare up". My heart palpitated, my lungs shrank, my stomach writhed, and all I could do was stare at the blank page. For my article, I had challenged myself to condense my 1,200-word FIRST-first draft to an 800-word "first" draft that fit my chosen website's guidelines, and I was certain that I couldn't do it.

No, that's a lie. I knew that I could do it. I just knew that I couldn't do it perfectly. And despite the fact that Thursday's in-class workshop was for a "first draft", and I fully expected my peers to bring in unpolished work, I was convinced that my peers would see the flaws in my work and think less of me...

And more than that, I was worried that I would see their work, and that it would be flawless (or at least, closer to flawless than mine), and that I would think less of myself. I would have to admit that someone was better than me, at least at this, and I knew, I mean I just knew, that it would shatter me. So, after three hours of revising my draft, getting it down to 800 words that I wasn't quite happy with, I very seriously debated not showing up to class.

But that would have been admitting defeat in a new way. That would have been robbing myself of my perfect attendance, so after a lovely little panic attack that Wednesday night, I printed out four copies of my 800-word "first" draft and stuffed them in my backpack for my classmates to judge during next morning's class.

I didn't want to look at the draft. I knew what was wrong with it; like I said, for me, finding flaws is natural as breathing. I just didn't know how to fix the flaws. In the midst of my "flare up", they were bright red and burning as infection, and the pain blinded me to a remedy.

In retrospect, this all sounds incredibly dramatic, but you need to understand that I was honest-to-both-evil-and-goodness-and-eveything-in-between drowning. All that week, I woke with starts due to "academic anxiety dreams". I pulled at my hair and I worried I would go bald and I just wanted this blood clot of anxiety in my gut to STOP.

Fine, I thought, throwing myself out of bed late that Wednesday night. If I can't fix the flaws, you better believe that I'll at least prove I know where the flaws are.

Back at my computer, I reopened my article draft and typed up a new first page entitled "The Details", which included a list of flaws that I saw in the article, as well as pleas for help.

It was madness! Here I was, terrified of my peers seeing my flaws, and now I was willingly showing them exactly what and where the flaws were.

"Something is so wrong with you," I muttered to myself, but I still handed out the new version of my draft to my classmates the next morning, and when they agreed that the flaws I pointed out did indeed exist, I smiled and nodded, while inside I wanted to rip my paper to shreds and never see any of my classmates again.

However childish and embarrassing this is, I can talk about it now, because over the next few days, I acknowledged that I was in one of the worst mental places I had ever been. I deduced that this was because 1) I hadn't been sleeping enough, 2) I hadn't been able to write much of my novel, and 3) yeah, I'd been putting way too much pressure on myself.

While I solved the first two issues with a weekend of self-enforced rest, denying my urge to "get ahead" on the next week's classwork by engrossing myself in my novel instead, the third issue is...much more difficult to solve. As of now, overcoming my perfectionism seems impossible--which is ironic, as I'm admitting a flaw right now in saying that I don't know how to admit my flaws...

But I'm okay with admitting that I don't know how to cure my perfectionism because, somehow, the admission doesn't feel like a flaw? It feels brave, it feels impressive, to prove that I'm so self-aware.

Self-awareness doesn't solve the problem, though. By itself, self-awareness only helps me identify with my perfectionism further. Yet even though I know this, I secretly, much more deeply believe that the second I let go of this notion that I am and therefore must continue to be "the best", I'll become content with mediocrity.

And that's the deepest, darkest secret, isn't it? That it isn't about being "perfect", not really. It's just about being "the best". Which sounds like it'd be harder, but it isn't. Being "the best" doesn't mean being flawless. It just means being so much better than everyone else that everyone else thinks you're perfect, in the same way that a five-year-old thinks a teenager's decisions are superior simply because, devoid of life experience, the five-year-old can't conceive of the teenager's failure.

Even in this idealized existence, though, I would still know I'm not perfect, so there would still be--and there is--a constant fear of other people catching up and catching wise, so even though I know that my perfectionism is wrong, I've got to continuously beat my own best, which puts me right back in the vicious cycle I detail in my post about Zeno's Paradox...

Initially, I couldn't find anything uplifting in this situation, so in an exercise in radical honesty, I was going to end this post with a collection of my article drafts. Last Thursday, however, I attended the launch party for the literary magazine in which my work was most recently featured. I read my work aloud, received contributor goodies, and made a slew of new (and very talented) friends. Oddly enough, being surrounded by talented people didn't make me feel inferior; it reminded me of my own talent! If I thought they were talented, and I was there with them, then I was forced to conclude that, while I may not be perfect, I am talented, too.

As we sat listening to one of our fellow contributors read, however, one of my new friends turned to me and said, "I'm so much worse than all of you..."

She didn't say this to be self-pitying. She wasn't fishing for compliments. Her face was pale and her voice was hushed, and I knew, I mean I just knew, that she was shattering. Her heart was palpitating, her lungs were shrinking, her stomach was writhing. Like me, she was suffering a "flare up".

"I know," I whispered back. "I feel like that too most of the time. I think we all do. But you've got to remember..." I held up my copy of the lit mag, "You're here, too."

We all--all writers, all creatives, all people of all kinds--simultaneously believe that we are the scum of the earth and the best thing since the Gutenberg printing press. The fact that flaws come naturally to me isn't special; it's easier for all of us to stare at our red burning flaws, but if we didn't secretly, much more deeply believe that we had something special, we would've given up a long time ago.

We didn't, though. I might not be perfect, but I'm still here, and no matter what you're going through, you're here, too. 

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I said it before, and I'll say it again: I can't be the only writer who thinks this way. So you can judge me for this, but I know I'm not the only one. So, have you ever experienced this? If so, let me know.