Many writers struggle with perfection. They interrupt themselves with editing and trying to make the writing “perfect.” In their pursuit of perfection, they don't finish and publish. But not publishing creates two problems:
- Not publishing means the writer receives no feedback. Sometimes, that means the writer stops writing. Worse, the writer continues to try to “perfect” this piece. But without publishing, who can tell what's perfect? Too many of these writers stop writing.
- Without publishing, no one can read the current value of their writing. Publishing is a necessary part of the feedback process.
No writing can be perfect. It can be good enough to publish.
Very few writers can write from the top to the bottom and finish. Most of us need to iterate, to cycle over the writing to realize what we want to say.
Writers Iterate Over a Piece of Writing
Since I'm writing a blog post, I'll use that as an example. I think of a post as at least these small pieces:
- The introductory paragraph.
- Any of the specific points you want to make in the piece.
- The ending.
Each of these are valuable to the writer, because we learn what we think as we write. Some posts need fewer points, some need more.
The ideal reader needs all three of these small pieces. As long as the writer starts and “finishes” each piece, the writer can make progress to finishing.
Progress means we learn what we think as we write. Until we finish the whole thing, we can't learn what we think.
That's why I tell writers to avoid editing in the middle of their writing. “Perfecting” any one of these pieces makes no sense. We need to finish to see if and how much we need to perfect. (Probably not as much as you think.)
What happens in the too-early pursuit of perfection? The writer never finishes. The ideal reader never sees what the writer wrote. Finishing matters much more.
Finishing Matters More than Perfection
Do writers know how readers will respond to our writing? Nope. We are not mind readers. That means we need to finish enough to publish. Not perfect before we publish.
That's why I recommend and teach how to write the best you can now, but focus on writing forward, staying in flow. Wait to edit until you're really all done with a piece. Then, edit and publish.
And don't worry. Release that writing and let it find its place in the world. What's the worst thing that could happen? People ignore your writing.
Want to practice finishing your writing? Register for the Q1 2025 Writing Workshop. You'll have many chances to practice finishing first, before perfection.
See all the posts in this intermittent series of “writing secrets.”