***PERFECTIONISM VS. WORD VOMIT***
If you’re a budding author, you’ve probably heard this piece
of advice before: “Write every day. It doesn’t matter if it’s carefully
chiseled out or the worst thing written in the history of the world. Let the
editors take care of your mistakes.” A lot of professional authors say this and
for a lot of rookies this advice works. This is just my preference, but this
particular piece of advice doesn’t work for me.
If I write something, I want it to be golden from the start.
While it’s true that no first draft is perfect the first time around, I at
least want to try to make it into the best thing I can. This is why I don’t
write everyday: because there are some days where my brain is so foggy that I
can’t produce that perfect piece of writing. To my way of thinking, if I can’t
be good at what I do, then what’s the point? Do my editors really want to go
through the nightmare of cleaning up my messes?
If you’ve ever seen my drawings before, you would ask why I
don’t take the perfectionism route with them given their weird quality. Yes,
it’s true that my drawings don’t always look like golden goose eggs. But that
doesn’t mean I don’t try. That’s the important thing for me: while I’ll never
be 100% perfect, I at least have to try my hardest. Editing will be much easier
if I actually make an effort to produce a good piece of art.
But like I said earlier, this approach to art doesn’t work
for everybody, but it works for me. Maybe it has something to do with the fact
that I used to have a huge ego back in my college days. It’s true: even the
smallest criticisms would make me retreat into my safe place, and this was in
my late teens and early twenties. When my creative nonfiction teacher asked the
class, “How many people here don’t think their own writing sucks?” I was the
only person who raised my hand. Of course, my big ego didn’t match up with my
writing skills at the time, because I wasn’t a diehard reader yet. Instead of
having high self-esteem, I was arrogant, both of which are two separate things.
As I got older, I realized that being overly arrogant was a
terrible approach to writing, because I desperately needed to let my critics
into my inner circle in order to get better. That’s when I reached out to
Second Draft Critique Services (a subdivision of Writer’s Digest) for help. Of
course, their services were quite expensive, so I could only submit short
stories. I was nervous at first, but when I actually read their critiques, I
was confident that I could make chicken salad out of chicken shit. That’s the
difference between arrogance and self-esteem: arrogance means you’re the king
of the world and self-esteem means you believe you can grow from anything.
But if it’s true that I don’t have a massively inflated ego
anymore, why do I still feel the need to be a perfectionist? I guess the easy
answer would be that old habits die hard. Then again, if I didn’t believe in
myself at least a little, I wouldn’t be writing in today’s world. I’ve had my
fair share of evil criticisms and it would have been easy to give into those
people. But being stubborn and full of fire got me through those hard times.
Only years later did I realize that positivity and kindness were the answers,
not hatred and anger.
So it stands to reason that if I write word vomit as opposed
to the perfect product, I would have sufficient self-esteem to believe that I
can fix it and make it shine. I’ll grant you that, but consider this: if I
write the perfect product, I won’t have nearly as much work to do when the time
comes to edit. Editing can either mean a few grammar corrections or a complete
overhaul of the story. To make the process less intimidating either way, I take
the perfectionist approach to my writing.
I know full well that first drafts will always have mistakes.
The current first draft versions of “Watch You Burn” and “Filter Feeder” read
like acid trips. While being on drugs may or may not be a heavenly experience
(I wouldn’t know), that’s not the feeling I want to give my readers. It may
work for Pink Floyd’s music, but not me. I’m not Roger Waters or David Gilmour
no matter how hard I try to be.
There’s another thing that I try to practice: not using
other artists’ transgressions as excuses to do them myself. I watched Pulp
Fiction as a teenager, so my very first movie script “Pumping Filter” had a
bunch of swearing, violence, and racial slurs, all of which didn’t need to be
there. Because it could never have been perfect, I abandoned the script
altogether. Another example would be me listening to Immortal Technique’s music
and thinking it’s okay to use homophobic slurs in my poetry. If you want to use
creative fuel, make sure you analyze it first and run it through your mental
filters. Because I couldn’t do that just yet, many of my hateful poems are no longer
in my archives. Thank god.
So now the question of the day is, are you a perfectionist
yourself or do you allow your writing to truly be a first draft? I’d love to
hear other opinions on this subject whether you agree with me or not. We’ve got
ears, say cheers!
***WEEKLY SHORT STORY CONTESTS AND COMPANY***
When my brain finally agrees to cooperate with me, I’ll
write something for the “snow man” prompt called “The Theomancer”. It goes like
this:
CHARACTERS:
- Krimson, Red Ninja
- Yeti, Mummy Giant
- Seven, Prophet of Sevenism
PROMPT CONFORMITY: There are snowmen all over The Frigid
Highlands, each of them with creepy decorations.
SYNOPSIS: The true identity of Krimson is unknown, but he is
believed to be an emissary of the Raven Strike Society. They are a secret
organization of atheists dedicated to disproving the beliefs of Sevenism, the
religion of choice for oppressive authority figures in this dystopian fantasy
world. Krimson ventures to the Frigid Highlands to assassinate Yeti, the
gatekeeper to Seven’s paradise. The battle between these two warriors is fierce
and intense, but Krimson is determined to get answers and revenge from Lord
Seven himself. The red ninja is believed to be a deity in human form, which is
why he’s having moderate success against Yeti in the first place.
FUN FACT: This story draws inspiration from the Mortal
Kombat and WCW franchises from the 1990’s. Krimson is a red palette swap of MK
ninjas Sub-Zero and Scorpion while Yeti is the direct theft of a WCW wrestler
of the same name. Seven is also taken from a former WCW wrestler, this time one
of the alter egos of Dustin Rhodes. All I needed was an excuse to use the title
“Theomancer” and now I have a reasonable story idea.
***TWITTER WAR OF THE DAY***
TWITTER TROLL: You’re a
professional wrestler. Lift some weights or do sit-ups. Good God!
BARON CORBIN: It’s your
girl’s fault. She keeps bringing cookies over late at night.
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