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★ 【K-SUWABE】 「 常闇踏陰 」 ☆ ✔ republished w/permission ⊳ ⊳ follow me on twitter

Writing Tips - Beating Perfectionism

1. Recognising writing perfectionism. It’s not usually as literal as “This isn’t 100% perfect and so it is the worst thing ever”, in my experience it usually sneaks up more subtly. Things like where you should probably be continuing on but if you don’t figure out how to word this paragraph better it’s just going to bug you the whole time, or where you’re growing demotivated because you don’t know how to describe the scene 100% exactly as you can imagine it in your head, or things along those lines where your desire to be exact can get in the way of progression. In isolated scenarios this is natural, but if it’s regularly and notably impacting your progress then there’s a more pressing issue

2. Write now, edit later. Easier said than done, which always infuriated me until I worked out how it translates into practice; you need to recognise what the purpose of this stage of the writing process is and when editing will hinder you more than help you. Anything up to and including your first draft is purely done for structural and creative purposes, and trying to impose perfection on a creative process will naturally stifle said creativity. Creativity demands the freedom of imperfection

3. Perfection is stagnant. We all know that we have to give our characters flaws and challenges to overcome since, otherwise, there’s no room for growth or conflict or plot, and it ends up being boring and predictable at best - and it’s just the same as your writing. Say you wrote the absolute perfect book; the perfect plot, the perfect characters, the perfect arcs, the perfect ending, etc etc. It’s an overnight bestseller and you’re discussed as a literary great for all time. Everyone, even those outside of your target demographic, call it the perfect book. Not only would that first require you to turn the perfect book into something objective, which is impossible, but it would also mean that you would either never write again, because you can never do better than your perfect book, or you’ll always write the exact same thing in the exact same way to ensure constant perfection. It’s repetitive, it’s boring, and all in all it’s just fearful behaviour meant to protect you from criticism that you aren’t used to, rather than allowing yourself to get acclimated to less than purely positive feedback

4. Faulty comparisons. Comparing your writing to that of a published author’s is great from an analytical perspective, but it can easily just become a case of “Their work is so much better, mine sucks, I’ll never be as good as them or as good as any ‘real’ writer”. You need to remember that you’re comparing a completely finished draft, which likely underwent at least three major edits and could have even had upwards of ten, to wherever it is you’re at. A surprising number of people compare their *first* draft to a finished product, which is insanity when you think of it that way; it seems so obvious from this perspective why your first attempt isn’t as good as their tenth. You also end up comparing your ability to describe the images in your head to their ability to craft a new image in your head; I guarantee you that the image the author came up with isn’t the one their readers have, and they’re kicking themselves for not being able to get it exactly as they themselves imagine it. Only the author knows what image they’re working off of; the readers don’t, and they can imagine their own variation which is just as amazing

5. Up close and too personal. Expanding on the last point, just in general it’s harder to describe something in coherent words than it is to process it when someone else prompts you to do so. You end up frustrated and going over it a gazillion times, even to the point where words don’t even look like words anymore. You’ve got this perfect vision of how the whole story is supposed to go, and when you very understandably can’t flawlessly translate every single minute detail to your satisfaction, it’s demotivating. You’re emotionally attached to this perfect version that can’t ever be fully articulated through any other medium. But on the other hand, when consuming other media that you didn’t have a hand in creating, you’re viewing it with perfectly fresh eyes; you have no ‘perfect ideal’ of how everything is supposed to look and feel and be, so the images the final product conjures up become that idealised version - its no wonder why it always feels like every writer except you can pull off their visions when your writing is the only one you have such rigorous preconceived notions of

6. That’s entertainment. Of course writing can be stressful and draining and frustrating and all other sorts of nasty things, but if overall you can’t say that you ultimately enjoy it, you’re not writing for the right reasons. You’ll never take true pride in your work if it only brings you misery. Take a step back, figure out what you can do to make things more fun for you - or at least less like a chore - and work from there

7. Write for yourself. One of the things that most gets to me when writing is “If this was found and read by someone I know, how would that feel?”, which has lead me on multiple occasions to backtrack and try to be less cringe or less weird or less preachy or whatever else. It’s harder to share your work with people you know whose opinions you care about and whose impressions of you have the potential of shifting based on this - sharing it to strangers whose opinions ultimately don’t matter and who you’ll never have to interact with again is somehow a lot less scary because their judgements won’t stick. But allowing the imaginary opinions of others to dictate not even your finished project, but your unmoderated creative process in general? Nobody is going to see this without your say so; this is not the time to be fussing over how others may perceive your writing. The only opinion that matters at this stage is your own

8. Redirection. Instead of focusing on quality, focusing on quantity has helped me to improve my perfectionism issues; it doesn’t matter if I write twenty paragraphs of complete BS so long as I’ve written twenty paragraphs or something that may or may not be useful later. I can still let myself feel accomplished regardless of quality, and if I later have to throw out whole chapters, so be it

9. That’s a problem for future me. A lot of people have no idea how to edit, or what to look for when they do so, so having a clear idea of what you want to edit by the time the editing session comes around is gonna be a game-changer once you’re supposed to be editing. Save the clear work for when you’re allocating time for it and you’ll have a much easier and more focused start to the editing process. It’ll be more motivating than staring blankly at the intimidating word count, at least

10. The application of applications. If all else fails and you’re still going back to edit what you’ve just wrote in some struggle for the perfect writing, there are apps and websites that you can use that physically prevent you from editing your work until you’re done with it. If nothing else, maybe it can help train you away from major edits as you go

Momo-chan’s obstacles that are not flagged | ShoujiMomo |

Artist: Michiru - Pixiv https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/31464966

Translation: @cat-creating​

※10 years into the future.

The event to get something in a high place.

A story with a tall girl, when something will sprout if such event suddenly occurs in a place where she thinks that she won’t have that connection.

Momo-chan watched Todoroki-kun’s marriage press conference on TV for the first time, and when she noticed her love, it was already too late.

Shouji-kun has been giving up on romance because of various things since he became an adult.

It’s very minor encounter, but I like it a lot.

how can i start writing more often?

That's going to depend what's stopping you from doing so. I'll tackle some of the common ones and see if that helps you out.

You're working or going to school full time or otherwise have a lot of responsibilities that fill your days

Writing doesn't have to be done in large chunks of time. You can write for ten minutes and still get something onto the page. You can also write by dictating a voice note into your phone and using speech-to-text to transcribe it. When you have a day off or a larger amount of downtime, try to block off some of it for writing or for editing those speech-to-text transcripts into a more polished story.

You don't have any ideas

Seek you writing prompt blogs. Make a post on your tumblr asking for requests. Expand the type of idea you're willing to write - not everything needs to be a 100K multichap, so think of a oneshot idea and write that instead.

Every time you think about posting a fic, you get so anxious you just stop writing

Write something that you're not planning to post. Write something by hand so that you can't post it without making the decision to transcribe it and post it later. Focus on the writing instead of the possible audience reactions to the writing.

You have an idea you love, but writing all of the backstory to get you to that point is so demotivating you can't even start

Make a bulleted list of all of the backstory components that need to be in place before you can get to the part of the story you want to write. Now write the part you're actually interested in. After you write that, check in with that bulleted list and see if any of those parts are more interesting now. If they are, write those too. If they're not, you're done and can move onto the next story. You can post those criteria as your summary or author's note or tags.

You have an idea you love, but all of the research you have to do first is so demotivating you can't even start

Do you actually need to do the research? Can you write the story in a way that hand-waves things (bring in some pseudo-science or a Fantasy Costco or something to get around what you're trying to figure out). Is there someone else who has done this research already? Do you know someone who loves researching that you could get to help you out? Is the research just an excuse for procrastination because the idea isn't fully baked yet?

You spend so much time researching that by the time you're ready to start writing you don't have any time left

Do you enjoy researching more than writing? Is there someone you can partner with to write the story based on your idea and research? Do you tend to research and write in the same block of time? In that case, separate those activities out. Research until you get to a good stopping point and then write until you run out of research and need to learn more.

Every time you start writing, someone interrupts you

If the interruptions come via social media or other online means, mute your notifications while you're writing. Change your status from online to do not disturb. If the interruptions are IRL, have a conversation with your family or roommates and work out an agreement where you can get blocks of time without interruptions or where you can put up a signal that you're writing and can't be disturbed. Get a whiteboard or sticky notes or something so that people can write down what they need from you and you can check it when you're done.

Every time you try to write, you get distracted by a bunch of other things and can't actually get much writing done

If you write on a device that connects to the internet, you can get really distracted by the internet. There are lots of tools out there to block out those kinds of distractions to help you right (example). You can also try writing by hand on paper so that the internet is further away from the task.

Writing is really intimidating. The blank page taunts you.

Start by writing out your idea at the top of the page. It doesn't have to be in-depth, it can just be something like "A and B are stuck in different locations for a long period of time and they discover they're in love with each other while writing letters back and forth." By doing this, the page is no longer blank so you can fool yourself into thinking you've already started writing and just need to continue.

When I sit down to write, I don't know where you start.

If you're in the process of writing a story, try not to end a writing session on the end of a scene. Either write the start of the next scene or stop writing before you hit the end of the current scene. Then the next time you write, you have a place to pick up from and don't need to make a choice of where to go next. If you're starting a new idea, start at the point where it's interesting. You can go back and write the boring part later if you decide you really want or need to.

There are lots more things that stop people from writing, but I'll let people in the notes add more examples. If you're a writer, how do you make time for writing?

I recently started watching My Hero Academia and have already watched up to season 4, episode 5.

I often came across content with the trio Todoroki×Bakugo×Midoriya, but there was no Iida×Midoriya×Uraraka,so I drew them myself. In general, I'm not good at drawing people, but I like this art