Perfectionist Writers Get Nothing Done - Tumblr Posts

Everyone: "Hey, when are you gonna finish that longfic, or even that new WIP you promised us?"

Me: [writes a single paragraph using roosting butterflies as a metaphor, and then spends two hours learning way more than necessary about Monarch butterflies, what roosts they choose and when and where they migrate, so the paragraph can be obsessively accurate in a way that not a single reader will notice or care about.] Hmm? Oh yeah. Soon. Really um... soon.

Ahhh, thank you, Aly!

I'm gonna be honest with you, The Sweetest Sting has been an exercise in "good enough." Because your girl is pathological when it comes to perfectionism, details, and research. That's why The Sun in My Eyes still isn't done 4 years after I started it. I'm so glad you wrote this post, because I'm currently down the tiktok rabbit hole of a certain subject for my next chapter and it's got me behind schedule. I'm crawling out of it and getting back to the actual writing so I can finish TSS before the end of April.

Also, below is an existential crisis I need to revisit every few days to remind myself to be conscious of my perfectionism. Don't know if it'll be helpful for you, but here ya go!

"Forget about perfect. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to BE."

nah, cuz I need to put y'all on @sparxaf's fic, The Sweetest Sting

I've only read up to chapter 4 on my binge of it so far, but oh my god, this chapter. I've felt the whole range of human emotion from that chapter ALONE.

The beautiful thing about it was, it reminded me why I love writing myself, and how much I've missed it 😭 to draw out that level of emotion from words alone is a powerful thing, and it's rewarding, to bring out that daydream you'd run over and over in your head, to others 🥺

and I asked myself, why haven't *I* been scribing away yet, even though I have more than my fair share of ideas I wanna get to? 😭 Oh yeah, the meticulous way I've been doing research runs so far, for my MCs 💀

Well, since I was reminded that in this case, the end goal of actually writing again is far more important than the "journey" of thoroughly cataloged research (that I may end up deleting from my photo gallery anyway, as I've done with other runs 💀)

I've decided a few new ways I wanted to approach my research, so I could get to writing again faster;

I could always jot down moments of significance in my notes

If I do want to screencap something, capture the moment one time, and move on. (Before, I would capture each moment a few times before moving onto the next, as I was unreasonably worried about something not being loaded in correctly if I went too soon/late, even though I inherently knew it was just my internal OCD-like symptoms flaring up)

Anyway, I wanted to thank @sparxaf again for singlehandedly destroying my internal OCD on this, by reminding me what's waiting for me on the other side of my research, that I wanna get to soon as possible.