Writer's Block - The Curse Of Perfectionism And How To Overcome It In Your Creative Writing

As a creative writer, you know all about writer’s block. Sat at the blank page or screen, trying to come up with the right paragraph, the right sentence, even the right WORD.

And it feels about as easy as juggling custard. Blindfold. With both hands tied behind your back.

One of the biggest causes of writer’s block is perfectionism – not being happy with your creative writing until every sentence, every word, ever syllable is utterly perfect.

There’s a fine line between wanting to write the best work you can write and getting dragged down in a never ending quest for perfectionism.

Here then is how perfectionism takes hold and causes writer’s block, and how you can overcome it:

How perfectionism causes Writer’s Block:

You can’t write a sentence without there being one word not quite right in it. Rather than change the word, or leave it to come back to and change later, you discard the whole sentence.

You write a page of 20 sentences, then dismiss and delete each and every one because a certain word wasn’t quite the perfect choice, in your opinion.

This is the smallest scale example of this kind of habit and behaviour. It only gets worse when you junk whole paragraphs, pages or chapters just because a few parts weren’t perfect.

This then leads to the attitude of “If I can’t write a complete sentence well, what’s the point of me even trying.” Hence, exasperation, writer’s block, no new writing and an anguished time for you the writer.

How to beat it:

A tiny shift in perspective is actually all that’s needed. Say you write your page of 20 sentences. Each has a word that’s not quite right, in your view. Rather than say “This is a page full of imperfect and therefore unusable sentences” you could look it at this way:

“This is a page that’s 90% brilliant. There’s some great writing here, I just need to change the odd word here and there.”

It sounds almost too simple but sometimes the best techniques are. Try it, leave the page, come back to it a day or week later with fresh eyes and make any extra tweaks and changes then if you feel they’re necessary.

Your approach now becomes: “I can right a near perfect page without much effort. It flows easily and I write freely this way. I can then come back and make any fine adjustments later. I might not even need to.”

The curse of perfectionism is a major cause of writer’s block – if you let it be.

Try this small change in your approach from today and notice the difference it makes to your creative writing.

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