We Have Seen the Writer’s Enemy, and He Is…

“We have met the enemy, and he is us,” the saying goes.*

In this case, I’m speaking of what I’ve come to believe may be the creative artist’s worst enemy: perfectionism.

I’ve written about perfectionism before, but it showed it’s ugly face to me again recently in such a way that I clearly saw—perhaps for the first time—its true power to seek out and destroy.

I emerged from the experience newly committed to eradicating this negative force from my life.

Here’s why I think you, too, must recommit yourself to overcoming any perfectionist tendencies you may have—in your writing life, at least.

Perfectionism Fills Us With Doubt and Shame

As many of you know, I’m a musician as well as a writer. I play the French horn in various musical groups, one of which is the local symphony orchestra.

I have several friends in this group, all of whom are excellent musicians who regularly demonstrate not only their talent and abilities, but their courage.

If you’ve ever played a musical solo in your life, you know what I’m talking about. When the whole group quiets down and the spotlight shines on you, there is no room for do-overs. You have to come through in the moment, and it doesn’t matter if you’re tired, your mouth is dry, you have a headache, or you’re suddenly scared to death.

You have a moment, and once that moment is gone, it’s gone for good.

Because of this one thing, I think being a musician is more difficult than being a writer. As writers, we can always go back and change things. As a musician, once the moment is over, you’re done. The music is out there, and if you bombed it, well, everyone heard, and you have to learn to live with it.

It’s not easy. I’ve battled fear related to solo playing my entire life. Most of the time I’ve won, but I’ve suffered some pretty severe losses, too.

A few weeks ago, I witnessed a friend of mind go through one of those losses, and I finally realized what was going on. It was like one of those “aha” moments when you see an experience you’ve gone through several times suddenly play out in someone else’s life, and you get to step outside of yourself and witness it with fresh eyes.

The experience: my friend made a fairly significant mistake on a difficult solo in the middle of a concert.

Now I have to qualify this—when I say “significant,” I’m talking about significant among experienced musicians. I can say with all confidence that the audience didn’t even notice it. But the conductor did, and some of my friend’s fellow musicians did, and that was enough.

My friend was so disappointed in herself afterwards, she just sat in her chair long after the concert was over, head down, while other musicians tried to console her.

Perfectionism Can Destroy the Desire to Create

We had all been there. The moments, hours, and even days after a botched solo are horrible, I can say from experience. You’re filled with regret and self-blame, and while your brain scrambles to try to figure out what went wrong, your heart is broken, usually because you put a lot of time and effort into getting it right—into playing it perfectly.

It’s particularly difficult because usually the mistakes are not made because of lack of preparation. Instead, they just “happen” in performance, maybe because of nerves, dry mouth, breathing problems, or something else weird in the moment, like a brain slip or nanosecond distraction.

Whatever caused it, the performance wasn’t perfect, and I realized that day that all of us are striving for perfect. The perfect solo. The perfect performance.

The perfect story or novel.

Watching my friend grieve, I grew angry. This lady is a highly skilled musician. She’s nailed solo after solo over a long career. Yet here she was feeling terrible about herself because of one slip up in a very difficult piece.

I knew that perfectionism was at the root of the whole thing. How dare something like that make my friend feel badly about herself? How dare perfectionism threaten to rob her of her courage, her presence, and her artistry?

I spent some time trying to cheer her up, then I left stewing. It wasn’t long before I started asking myself: How many times have you allowed perfectionism to mess you up?

If You Can’t Do It Perfectly, Why Do It At All?

We writers are very similar to musicians and other artists in one key way—we want what we create to be perfect.

Not necessarily perfect in a mathematical or analytical way, but perfect in an artistic way. We want what we produce to match what we see (or hear) in our mind’s eye (or ear). We know how it should be, and we expect ourselves to produce something that lives up to that expectation.

So we practice. We write. We edit. We rework. We polish. These are all good things. In fact, it’s often the search for perfection that inspires us to work our hardest to improve.

BUT, and this is a big but!, we MUST realize that we aren’t perfect and never will be, and keep that realization close to our hearts while we work, lest we come to believe that we really can attain perfection, only to be extremely disappointed.

For inevitably, we will fall short of perfection, most every time, and if we aren’t prepared for it, it can destroy us and stop us from ever creating again.

I would go so far as to say that perfectionism is at the heart of every period of writer’s block and every incidence when a writer says, “That’s it, I’m done.”

If you can’t do it perfectly, why do it at all?

Writers Must Strive for Perfectionism—But Accept They’ll Never Achieve It

It’s natural to want your work or your performance to be as close to perfect as possible. But you have to walk a thin line between that desire and the thought that if it isn’t perfect, it’s not worth doing.

Perfectionism is behind every fearful performance. We fear we won’t play the passage as well as we practiced it—that it won’t be perfect. Perfectionism stands in the way of our just enjoying the music or the story as it unfolds.

I’ve noticed the people who perform the best—those who seem to have an endless supply of confidence—have mastered walking this line. They work hard. They practice. They prepare. But then they don’t sweat it. They enjoy the performance. They sit back and just play.

They lack that fear of not being perfect, because they’ve accepted that they never will be.

I think that’s the key for writers and all other artists. If we want to keep creating and enjoying the work, yes, we need to work hard and do our best to improve, but we also must frequently remind ourselves that we are not perfect, and neither will our creations be.

We must accept, accept, accept that we are flawed and what we create will be flawed as well. Somehow we have to make peace with that to be able to create at all.

In the end, it’s okay, because we live in a world of humans, so nobody else is perfect, either. There is room for all our creations. In fact, if perfectionism robbed us of all our artists, who would be left to play the music? To write the stories? To paint the pictures?

Don’t let perfectionism stop you or even put you on pause. Don’t let it strike fear in your heart. Don’t let it convince you that what you’re doing isn’t worthwhile.

We’ve met the enemy, and the enemy is perfectionism.

The battle lines are drawn.

Who will be the victor in your creative life?

Have you noticed perfectionism sabotaging your creativity?

*The quote is attributed to cartoonist Walt Kelly, who was said to be parodying commodore Oliver Hazard Perry’s quote during the War of 1812 of, “We have met the enemy and they are ours.”