Time to stop dressing the baby
Posted by Angie Fox on 27 Mar 2008 | Tagged as: Craft, Publishing, Writing Life, Books
I don’t know if any of you are guilty of this or not, but when I start tinkering with something, it’s hard to stop. Even when I dress my four-year-old daughter, I’m always adding a little headband or maybe a ribbon or adding a sweater. And yesterday, before sending galleys back to my publisher, I had to call Chessie, my critique partner, and quiz her about a single word. Do I scratch it out? Do I leave it in?
The kicker is, I don’t think our books will ever be as perfect as we want them to be. There will always be something to adjust, tweak, change or think about way too hard. To the point where I almost drove right past the UPS store last night and kept my galleys for one more day. After all, they’re not due until tomorrow. I could have overnighted them today. Taken one more look, thought more about that one word.
So how do you tame your “perfectionist” streak when it comes to your writing? Or do you? Does the same drive that makes us crazy also improve our work? Or do we just need to stop overthinking, stop the car and let our books go?
I’m the same, I hate handing those baby’s back-I’m convinced I’ll get it perfect one day!
March 27th, 2008 at 6:07 pmAngie - I obsess endlessly about the words. I can’t even read my books when they come out because I ALWAYS see words I wish I’d changed. I don’t have any strategies to handle this neurosis. I just revise until I either come up against a deadline or am so sick of the book that I can’t bear to look at it again. And then I try not to think about it.
March 28th, 2008 at 2:58 amOMG, you so just nailed me. Well, not that I’ve had to mail anything to an editor or agent yet but papers for classes I’m taking. I’m always second guessing myself and constantly reworking it until the very last minute.
I’m sure there’s some 12-step program for us but then again, we’d probably have to write the perfect essay to be accepted in…
March 29th, 2008 at 5:56 pmI laughed when I read this post. I so know how you feel. You have my full sympathy. Call it meticulous, pendantic, obsessive, yep, but at the end of the day we know we’ve given our best.
April 6th, 2008 at 4:41 pmHappy writing,
Kyra