How to Overcome Perfectionism and Just Write the Thing

Or: Overcoming your artistic stumbling blocks.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

My friend Juneta is an artist writer. In fact, when I think about artist writers, I always think about Juneta.

An artist writer is someone who:

• Is a perfectionist.
• Has lots of ideas, but tends to want struggle shifting between them, so usually works on one thing at a time.
• Writes for their muse.
• Really wants readers to appreciate the artistry of what they’ve done.
• Has a hard time moving on if what they’ve done so far doesn’t feel perfect enough.
• Sometimes feels like they can’t do something, even though they totally can, because they want to do everything really well.
• They often work more slowly than other writers, but generally wind up with a really beautiful draft.

Every type of writer (there are five, btw) has their own kryptonite they have to overcome. For artists, it’s that perfectionism. Everything that trips them up stems from that.

Their muse often won’t let them move past something that isn’t perfect.

They write more slowly than they’d like to, because they are striving for perfection.