Originally posted: August 26, 2020
Updated: February 17, 2023
We’ve all been there as writers.
We sit in front of a Word document old enough to drink, and we fiddle with a few lines of dialogue. When our friends ask us if we’ve started shopping around our novel (or we hear Stewie needle Brian about it on Family Guy), we shrug and change the subject.
We ask ourselves, and our writing mentors, “How do I know when the work is done?” We agonize over all this and hate ourselves for it. We know that we need to find a way to accept that “pretty good and done” is better than “perfect and never done,” but we just can’t seem to snap ourselves out of our perfectionist tendencies.
How do we break the cycle?!
A good start would be examining where the perfection is coming from. As a perfectionist in recovery, do you want to hear my guess?
Fear.
Fear of rejection.
Fear of letting go, of ceding control.
How Did We Get Here?
Positive psychology, a school of thought that was popular about ten years ago, did one negative thing for all of us. Its emphasis on being happy all the time wasn’t healthy. Happiness 24/7 is unsustainable, and when we fail to achieve this impossible goal, if we subscribe to positive psychology, we might feel even worse, guilty that we aren’t shiny, happy people all the time.
Luckily, pop psychology has moved on in recent years, focusing more on maintaining calm and mental health through therapy, responsible psychiatric medication, meditation, and mantras. (For instance, check out this awesome blog post on letting go of perfectionism from Fingerprint for Success.)
That’s great for all the shrinks out there, Jess. How does this apply to the perfectionism I have around my manuscript?
If we as writers think we’re supposed to be happy and productive and perfect and polished all the time, then rejections are going to be MAJOR setbacks for us. They’ll seem to point out the fact that the work we spent so much time polishing and perfecting is NOT perfect. Or, at least, not perfect enough.
I know this firsthand.
Story Time
In 2014, I started drafting a commercial novel. I picked it up and put it down, especially as I was establishing this business, but by 2016, I had a working first draft. I self-revised once from 2017 to 2018, then again with my critique partner from 2018 to 2019. Finally, last August, I had what I thought was a funny, quirky, polished draft and was ready to start querying.
One of my first queries received a full manuscript request.
‘No freaking way!’ I thought. ‘What if I get to cut the line and get representation right off the bat?’
No such luck. I received a very nice rejection, with encouragement to revise and resubmit.
Despite the fact that an R&R is one of the best rejections a writer can get from an agent, I stopped querying for months, thinking I needed to perfect my work in this one agent’s opinion before I sent it out to anyone else.
(Check out this post if you want to understand what an R&R means opposed to two other types of agent rejections.)
I finally got antsy enough in the spring to ignore my perfectionist impulse and have been querying since. Recently, I got another full manuscript request and another even nicer rejection. This agent had all the praise in the world for my novel, but because they and I did not see eye to eye on a particular plot point, it was a bit of a literary “It’s not you; it’s me.”
Admittedly this stung and slowed my pace, but I didn’t let it stop me altogether. I got my hopes dashed, but then I got back on the horse instead of giving my bruises too much time to heal and forgetting how to use the reins in the process.
And you know what? It all worked out. That commercial novel was picked up in a two-book deal by Hachette’s Bookouture imprint in March 2022. It became my debut novel, My Big Fake Wedding, which launched at #1 on Amazon’s Humorous American Fiction list last August! It’s kicked off a writing career that I’m building alongside my existing editing practice, and I couldn’t be happier.
Now, what would have happened if I’d stopped persisting, given in, and become my own bottleneck? Certainly not any of this!
With this in mind, here’s my first lesson on perfectionism and submitting your work:
You might find that the more you pitch, the easier it gets to face no’s.
If I had only ever gotten my most recent, very nice rejection, it still would have made me stop querying for months. Why? It would have been my first major instance of getting my hopes up and getting them smooshed a little. Like getting a first tattoo or riding a roller coaster, rejection from an agent is a new sensation, one that’s scary, exhilarating, and maybe looks like it might hurt a bit. You can ask people who have tattoos or have been on roller coasters what it’ll feel like, but no one can really do justice describing it. The prospect of facing this new, vulnerable thing is scary because we don’t know what it’ll feel like, but once we know, we can learn how to deal with it.
Those Not Cowering Under the Weight of Perfectionism Are Already Benefiting from Their Confidence.
I’ve known some writers who send out their work and get it accepted in a way that seems easy, even if the editor at the lit mag or publishing house needs to work with them on the story or novel before it can be published.
This happens not necessarily because they’re better than the rest of us or have it easier. This happens because these folks have the chutzpah to send something in and/or to introduce themselves via email/on Twitter/at a conference when their novel still isn’t quite right or when the move is out of their comfort zone.
Ready to Buck Perfectionism? Send Your Stuff Out Already!
Here’s how I get around my perfectionist tendencies to join their ranks. Maybe it’ll work for you too.
Get your work to a place where you’re happy with it but it’s not necessarily perfect. Maybe the story elements are tight and without plot holes, but there is still the odd misplaced comma.
Start submitting this project in clumps, and track how many agents or publications you send your work to.
My Editing Vault subscribers get tools like query tracking spreadsheets for just $5 a month.
When I advise you to send your submissions in clumps, this is so that you can revise every time you hit the end of a clump.
For a short piece pitched to literary journals, I recommend capping a clump at every five submissions.
For a book-length work pitched to agents, I recommend capping a clump at every twenty.
When you hit a certain number (e.g., you’ve sent to five lit mags and gotten one rejection, so you’re about to send your sixth), send your work to a trusted writing friend or professional for feedback. Incorporate their feedback, as well as any constructive rejections that you agree with, into a shiny, new draft of the novel for Clump 6-10.
I won’t get into when you should stop pitching a project altogether.* Only you can know that. But until you decide to throw in the towel, this will help you see that putting yourself out there pays off far more than perfectionism does.
*Maybe someday I’ll write a post on when you should have a “manuscript funeral,” but I don’t feel like going that bleak today.
What If the Rejection Is Personal?
Sometimes, our fear isn’t just of rejection, but of rejection of a work that was emotionally difficult for us to tackle. Maybe it’s about subject matter that is dear to us, like a grief memoir, an autobiographical or #OwnVoices novel, or maybe it’s a research-heavy book that explores dark topics that need trigger warnings right out of the box.
So, how much scarier is the rejection when it’s about something that you love and care about deeply? How anxiety-inducing is it to think that a publisher will just consider it as either good or bad for their bottom line?
For me, such a thought would make me want to dig my heels in, hold on to the project, and be my own bottleneck for as long as I could.
This is tough. I think the answer to how to beat perfectionism in light of personal rejection is going to be different for everyone, but here are three places I might start.
Distinguish between the Art of Writing and the Business of Publishing.
Work really hard to learn this difference.
If you’re having trouble grasping this concept, think about how personal people have it in other industries. Every day, models are told that their bodies aren’t fit enough, their faces not pretty enough to carry an ad campaign. How much more personal does it get?! You and I both know that everyone is beautiful, but there’s a difference between the art of the physical body and the crass business of what sells clothes. Similarly, there is a difference between the art of writing about something personal and the business of bringing it to market.
If you’re detail-oriented, you may have noticed that earlier I said rejections “seem to” point out that the project we’ve worked so hard on isn’t good enough. Isn’t perfect. I used “seem to” there because this is not always the case.
Sometimes, it is perfect, just not for that agent’s list. Sometimes, it’s fantastic, quirky, sure to win the Booker Prize, but it doesn’t have an obvious hook that publishers can monetize into preorders. Sometimes, it’s amazing, mind-blowing, heartfelt, but the awards committee received so many submissions this year, and one or two edged out just a little higher than yours.
In other words, there are parts of this industry that are subjective and that are beyond your control. They are often tied to gatekeepers’ tastes and to capitalism. They are neither good nor bad, but they are the reality, and when they turn into a “no,” you should do everything in your power NOT to take them personally.
Make a Mantra.
To help not take such things personally, make yourself a mantra. The best ones are positive things you need to know and believe about yourself, but ones that you struggle with all the same. Find your mantra and put it somewhere you’ll see it regularly, like your phone’s lock screen.
You’ve probably heard “put a Sticky Note on the bathroom mirror” in relation to this suggestion, but I recommend saving your Windex budget and putting it on something you check a million times a day, like your phone. What we’re trying to do here is rewrite a negative neural pathway into one of confidence and self-esteem. To let a path worn into the grass heal, we have to stop walking on it and tread a new pathway. This takes work in both the physical and neural instances, and since you check your phone a billion times a day, you’re going to internalize positive messaging faster. It’s just science. Over time it will become ingrained in your head.
Too worn out or close to the problem to come up with a mantra? Here are some you might try:
“It is already done. I am a writer.”
“I am enough.”
“I am strong.”
“My work is valuable.”
Rip Off the Band-Aid! Share Your Work with Others.
Another way to take the sting out of personal rejection is to get used to sharing your work with other writers, perhaps in the form of a critique partner or a writing workshop.
If you’ve always been a solo writer, it can be helpful to get objective feedback to the pages you hold dear. A workshop can be a safe space and a training ground for that smooshy kind of pain I was talking about earlier because the stakes are lower (e.g., “Deb from workshop didn’t like my piece” vs. “My dream agent said it’s a no for him”).
In my experience, lots of perfectionism comes from fear, and that’s understandable. It’s a very brave thing to put yourself, your work, your hopes and dreams out there for others to pass judgment on. But you know how your work is never going to be “good enough”? If it sits on a hard drive collecting dust.
Do what you need to do to ground yourself in confidence, and take one little baby step. Then take another. You might fall a time or two—that’s why they’re called baby steps—but eventually you will get where you want to go.