Tag: Anti-perfectionism

I need my anti-perfectionism practice today

:D

What a way to start a post. Anyway, I read an interesting interview today and feel energized to get started early despite being more than two hours short on sleep.

For the last few days I’ve been using 24 minutes timers and a scribbled time log to keep me focused on writing, although yesterday I forgot to start the timer more often than not. However, it all has helped because my word counts are up and I’m feeling both productive and like I’m getting some free time to myself that doesn’t involve me feeling guilty for not writing more.

As of three days ago, I’ve started a streak of 1,000+ word days that I’d like to keep going for a while. My last 1,000+ words a day streak ended in March 2013 (you can see it in the sidebar) and lasted for 27 days. It would be nice to set a new record for 1,000+ days since it’s 6 years later now. :)

Active streaks:

  • Editing something every day (typo hunts and continuity checks that aim to make finishing my books easier and the last read through more likely to go quickly).
  • Writing fiction every day
  • Reading fiction every day
  • Writing more than 1,000 words a day

New one I’m aiming to start today: Finish at least one 24 minute sprint every day before noon.

I actually plan to go for three today but the streak I’m aiming for is just to make myself get that one sprint in every day before noon no matter what else I do.

And now it’s time to start writing fiction. My fingers are limbered up and my brain is firing nicely and I’m clear-headed. Away I go. :)

I’ll do a progress post later today with word counts! I don’t want to deal with that right now. :)

A daily dose of anti-perfectionism

It’s time for my daily dose of anti-perfectionism. I allow myself to type a post or journal entry without editing except to fix typos and actual mistakes. No revising my words. Actually, it’s not so much that I allow it, as I make myself. :D I wanted to go back and change that, but I said, nope, you have to leave it and move on. It’s a lot harder to do that than you’d think with a brain like mine!

I wrote 1,887 words yesterday, which is the most I’ve logged since 5/28. That was the day I finished my last piece of work. Today I plan to finish my current piece of work, that short story that I restarted five times. It’s up to over 7,000 words now and I’m going to write until it’s done today. I hope. :)

My daily writing streak is 6 days long now. So is my daily fiction reading (longer, actually, but it’s easier to keep up with like this), and my daily editing streak is five days long. And by editing I mean proofreading and typo hunting, continuity checking, and error fixing. That’s all. I’m really trying to avoid touching the stuff too much. I do not allow myself to change things for the sake of change. The fact that I can reread these stories this many times and not be bored with them yet bodes well for my state of mind. :)

When I’m feeling creative, I love rereading my own work. When my inner critic is running free, or I’m suffering from a resurgence of perfectionism, I start to hate it. Everything reads stilted and flat and I get no joy from the humor and no excitement from the adventure. I really don’t like being in that state of mind.

And holy crap. I revised this thing to death. I think I need to start over and do this exercise again. :-o

Maybe I’ll just save it for the journal entry I started. I’ve been using the journal as a daily log, recording time stamps and what I was doing and plan to do at each entry. I started that a few days ago and it seems to be helping me concentrate and stay focused.

Now, off to write before it’s 10 am and I haven’t done a thing but this silly post.

And maybe it wasn’t really revising so much as it’s just a pure example of my writing process. I really don’t write things in order. My thoughts aren’t always complete and I do confuse people in conversation by jumping around as I talk. I have to go back and fill in and expand things that I know but didn’t quite get out of my head and into the conversation. :D That’s pretty much how I write too. :)

AM writing and anti-perfectionism

It’s 9:06 and I’m just about to write my first fiction words of the day. This little detour is me practicing anti-perfectionism. I’m deliberately allowing myself to correct only typos, but not revise anything I type here this morning. I think I’m going to practice this daily, although that might not always mean a blog post.

Yesterday I didn’t write much fiction at all. But I did keep my streaks alive.

50 words of fiction on one story.

Read and edited parts of two stories.

Read some fiction.

The book I’m reading is entertaining and it has definitely made me think about whether or not I’ve been doing a good job of reining in my inner critic. I rephrase things in my head a lot before I write them down and I shouldn’t do that. I know it’s the critic inside me telling me I’m doing it wrong so I have to redo it before it even sees the page. That makes for really slow writing, when I let that part of me win.

Anyway, no point dragging this out. I’m ready to write some fiction this morning.