A lot of what we will be discussing at this week’s Saturday Night Write meeting when we consider Anne Lamott’s book is ways to approach creativity.  There is a whole section on casting off perfectionism.  This really spoke to me when I was a new writer, because I tend to internalize failures and stop trying when it feels like I am not instinctively good at something.  But there is no one right way to make art, and you don’t have to be good at something to have fun.  At one point, I gave up on writing for a couple of years because I felt I wasn’t good enough to get recognition — when it was trying to write the perfect thing at the perfect time, on instinct alone, that was actually holding me back and making my work feel forced.

Perfectionism will, says Lamott, “ruin your writing and playfulness and life force. … Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.”   It is by letting go of this need to create perfectly that we give ourselves permission to be creative, to do something that may or may not be objectively good but was above all else FUN.  If you can’t give yourself permission to just make stuff up, then, well, I give you permission.  Go forth and be creative.  Make a mess.  Your local writing community or critique group will be happy to help you tidy it up.  Sometimes you can have written nothing, and still need to work on this.  If you are having a hard time making decisions about elements in your story, then you’re possibly facing perfectionism.  Because what if you choose “wrong” and the story doesn’t work?  Or you choose “wrong” and that’s the one decision that ruins the piece?  Or if you choose “wrong” because it isn’t the choice your favorite writer or your potential fans would have made?  If just thinking about this makes you anxious, and you find yourself setting your notebook aside without writing anything — well, that’s perfectionism, and I’ve been there.  But you know what?  There is no one decision that will completely ruin your story.  And the beauty of writing is that even if you gathered all your favorite writers in a group and gave them the same detailed writing prompt, they would each come up with something different.  Which means that there is no one “right” choice either.  And without an unequivocally correct choice — you can’t actually achieve perfect.  So stop trying to shoot for perfect and shoot for something achievable.  Go for emotionally satisfying.  Or funny.  Or psychologically sound.  Or powerful.  Or outrageous.  Or whatever lets you enjoy being creative.

And if you make a choice you don’t like, or doesn’t work for your target audience?  Guess what?  That’s what editing is for.

Can you look in a mirror and say out loud, “I am a writer,” I am creative,” or “I have something to say with my writing?”  If you can’t, what is holding you back?  What would help you to feel more comfortable during your writing time, or when you choose to share your writing with others?