Happy Leap Day!!
Sometimes you read over things and they’re just not very good. Sometimes you read over many things in a row that aren’t very good, or just not up to your exacting standards. At this point is the time to step back and write a blog post about it.
I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I am overcoming it, I am taking classes in slap-dash (imagine classes in slap-dash. Two doors down from the classes in procrastination and across the hall from the classes in three pm naps). Slap-dash isn’t good either, though, so I guess you have to balance yourself. Perfectionism can be appropriate at times, but you’ve got to control it and figure out when you should just stop tweaking.
Another danger of perfectionism is looking at something half-finished and deciding it will never be any good and to toss it – if it can’t be perfect, why try at all? Yes, some things do need to be tossed, but sometimes they just need a few rounds of revision or possibly a bit of a rewrite. Especially if whatever you’re reading is just a rough first draft. Especially if you’ve looked at the same bit of work on another day and thought it was actually quite good.
Maybe I’m just in a critical frame of mind today. I will forge ahead.
Do you have critical days and non-critical days?
hmmmm...do you ever make a note of what you don't like about something before revising it? Could be interesting to keep a log and review that every so often to see if there are any patterns/themes in what you don't like, and what you recommend to yourself, and what you change your mind about later...
ReplyDeleteDoing that would also be another way of procrastinating and perfecting too of course though...lol