Why you should stop trying to write a good book
How to write like an imperfectionist.
If you’re a writer, or an artist of any kind, the ability to finish what you start may be the most important skill you can have. It’s what separates amateurs from professionals. It’s what turns the spark of an idea into a published novel.
If you’re writing a book, you probably want it to be great. That’s an understandable instinct—but it might actually be standing in your way.
I’m a perfectionist, as any writer who knows me can tell you. I’ve spent the past six years working on my ninth novel, and only now is it finally headed toward publication. So I know what I’m talking about when I say that perfectionism is a double-edged sword, one that can cut your potential short if you let it.
I’m going to show you how to overcome your perfectionism and finish every story you start writing, from the smallest short story to the most ambitious novel.
The first step is understanding the problem—where this self-sabotaging attachment to perfection comes from.
I. Why You’re a Perfectionist
Perfectionism is, most often, an outgrowth of insecurity. It’s a manifestation of the belief that you are your work. When you tie your identity to your creative output, any criticism of it feels like a criticism of you as a person.
The reality is that your worth as a human being isn’t tied to the value of your art. But for those of us who identify as artists, especially as one specific kind of artist, what we produce really does feel like an extension of us. If someone leaves a scathing review on our book, it’s like they took a stab at our arm. The more closely your sense of self is tied to your artistic work, the more vulnerable you’ll be to criticism, both internal and external.
The thing is that feelings are very rarely an accurate indicator of truth. Add onto this the fact that art is inherently subjective, and you can say goodbye to having any objective view of your own work in progress.
The author Annie Dillard puts it this way:
“There is neither a proportional relationship nor an inverse one between a writer’s estimation of a work in progress and its actual quality. The feeling that the work is magnificent, and the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged.”
You cannot know, no matter how hard you try, just how good or bad your book is before it’s finished. Perfectionism is rooted in the false belief that there’s a point at which your writing will be flawless, or exactly what you first envisioned, or without room for improvement. No such point exists. It’s uncomfortable to live in uncertainty, but it’s a necessary part of the creative process.
One simple way of gaining some perspective is looking at one-star reviews of your favorite books. No matter how revered, every work of literature has its haters, and they can be downright scathing.
When you read bad reviews of something you love, you might see all the reasons the reviewers are wrong—they misunderstood the themes, or didn’t have the right expectations, or simply weren’t the intended audience. You might actually find yourself agreeing with some of their points, but still coming to the opposite conclusion. Many of the reasons some people dislike my favorite books and films are among the reasons why I love them so much.
The obvious takeaway from this exercise is that art is subjective. The more useful lessons are the specific ways in which your subjective taste differs from other readers’. You have to accept that you’ll never please them all.
If your book reaches a wide enough audience—and it doesn’t have to be all that wide—someone will have a reason to hate it. I would say it’s not personal, but it is… in a sense. It’s a simple misalignment of the reader’s personal taste with your own.
That’s the beauty, and the difficulty, of putting anything out into the world for people to engage with. Your work will connect with some people, but certainly not all. Even the most widely popular books, movies, and musical artists aren’t universally beloved. Given the diversity of thought and taste across the globe, it’s an impossibility.
And if you’re aiming to appeal to as many readers as you can, a word of warning: in many cases, the more you try to cater to a wide array of people, the less your work will resonate with any one person. Flattening your writing to appeal to the masses has a chance of yielding greater commercial success, but it deprives readers of the memorable choices and relatable specifics that might make them superfans of your stories. The books we tend to love the most are those that feel like they were written just for us, with such a unique perspective that it seems the author must have read our minds.
It’s worth asking yourself whether your high standards are really yours at all, or merely standards you imagine others will hold you to. Too often, we think about what hypothetical readers might hypothetically think about our hypothetical published book—before we’ve even finished a rough draft.
It’s not helpful. You can’t see the future, you can’t read minds, you can’t guarantee your book will be a masterpiece. The only thing you can do, the only thing that matters, is finishing it.
As scary as publishing something imperfect may be, it’s not the end of the world. I would know—when I was younger, I wrote and published a lot of books that weren’t great. (Who knows, I may do it again!) We can’t be afraid of failing, even failing in public, even failing repeatedly in public, because that’s what it takes to master a craft.
The insidious lie of perfectionism is that it’s the only way to become a great writer, the only thing that ensures our work is good enough. But perfectionism and quality aren’t one and the same.
There’s another way, one that avoids the pitfalls of perfectionism while still allowing for the ardent pursuit of quality. It’s called imperfectionism.
II. How to Be an Imperfectionist
The concept of imperfectionism might just change your life. It’s certainly changed the way I look at my work.
In his book Meditations for Mortals, the writer Oliver Burkeman explains this philosophy as, essentially, the only rational approach to productivity for finite beings. If we lived forever, sure, you could afford to spend a hundred years on your debut novel—ten million, if you like. But we are finite creatures, and as such, we have a limited amount of time to develop our skills and make work that matters. Perfection is impossible, and striving for it only wastes precious time.
The best way to approach our writing, then, is to set the bar lower, closer to ‘good enough’ than ‘divinely inspired magnum opus.’ To finish each project in a timely manner, so we can move on to the next, and the next, growing with each one.
Being an imperfectionist is not about throwing all care for quality out the window. It’s about taking an honest look at the time you have and how you can make the most of it. Striving to write well, to write stories that mean something—these goals matter as much as ever. They’re simply not tied to the delusional notion that the work must be utterly flawless before it can be called complete.
There’s a quote by the writer Cal Newport that I absolutely love:
“The next book will be great; this one just has to be good.”
He tells himself this when he’s writing a book, to take the pressure off.
There’s always the next book. If you want to write for your whole life, you don’t need to worry about pouring your entire soul into a single novel. You don’t have to stay up at night wondering if a single plot hole might ruin your artistic legacy. Each work is merely one part of a much larger tapestry.
And the more you write, the more stories you finish, the less any one failure will sting. So focus on finishing what you start, publishing if that’s your goal, and shortening the feedback loop. You’ll make faster progress in developing your skills, all while producing a larger and more vibrant body of work.
In short: stop trying to write a great book, and just write the book.
But I know what you’re thinking. Isn’t this putting quantity over quality? Won’t imperfectionism take away my competitive edge, my unwavering dedication to crafting good work?
The truth is that the relationship between quantity and quality is more complicated than you might think.
III. Quantity or Quality?
I’m not a quantity-over-quality person. I think having standards is a good thing, especially in an age where low-effort slop is abundant. The approach that I’m trying to take, and the approach I would encourage others to take, is a middle path. It’s a balance between an aspiration to perfection and an allegiance to production.
There are benefits to prioritizing prolific output above all else. There’s also merit to making quality your singular focus. But go too far in either direction, and you start to lose perspective.
Go too hard in the pursuit of quantity, and you’ll start to view your work as nothing more than a commodity, the process as something rote and mechanical. Fixate too much on quality, and nothing you make will ever meet your standards to publish.
The best way to avoid these traps is to moderate yourself. If you tend to veer too far in the quantity direction, set a goal to improve one specific aspect of your craft with each project you take on. If perfectionism is your Achilles’ heel, commit to a deadline or release schedule. It’ll be uncomfortable. It should be—you’re stretching your artistic muscles, moving the goalposts in unfamiliar ways.
I tend to put a lot of effort into the production of both my books and my videos—like I said, I’ve spent six years writing my latest novel—but I’m increasingly interested in approaching my work with the mindset of an imperfectionist. There’s a video or two on my channel I’ve literally spent years working on (like this one—started writing it when I was 17, published when I was 20). I’m proud of them, and I don’t regret making them—but that’s a really long time for a YouTube video.
I’ve been making videos for five years now, and writing novels for fourteen. I have more ideas for books and videos than I’ll ever stand a chance of publishing at my current pace.
My aim in life is not to exhaust my bank of ideas before I die—in part because I’d really be scraping the bottom of the barrel by the end, but also because I’d like to think my imagination will never stop cooking up fresh concepts. Still, perfectionism has held me back from bringing as many of these ideas into the world as I could have.
I don’t expect it’s an inclination I’ll ever be truly rid of; I’m not sure I’d want to excise it entirely, since it’s part of what makes me who I am. But I’ve found imperfectionism to be a useful reframing.
All of this advice is for a particular kind of writer. There are certainly writers who would stand to benefit instead from slowing down and spending more time polishing their work, learning a thing or two from their perfectionist peers. You probably know which side you fall on.
When I was younger, I wasn’t much of a perfectionist. I probably should’ve spent more time revising. It’s impossible to know for sure, but I might have progressed more rapidly if I’d put more emphasis on improving the quality of my prose, or my character development, instead of assuming it was pretty much good enough from draft one.
But now that I’m older, more experienced, and intent on not repeating the mistakes of the past, I find I tend to go too far in the opposite direction.
Imperfectionism shows a middle path, a way to balance quality and quantity, aspiration toward artistic excellence and the reality of a finite life. It’s a much-needed antidote to perfectionism, and it might be what you need to finally finish that book you started writing.
Stop trying to make it perfect. Just make it.
This piece is the least perfectionistic essay/video I’ve ever made, maybe the closest to a stream-of-consciousness dispatch so far. That’s because I’m trying to live out this principle of imperfectionism.
I’m not naturally very good at it, but it’s a mindset I’m trying to adopt—in my videos, my writing, in just about everything I do. Again, that doesn’t mean you’ll see a dip in quality, but you should be seeing more of me. I have so much I want to create and share, and perfectionism has held me back for far too long. If you’re in the same boat, I hope some of the ideas I’ve shared here have helped.
Oh, and that novel I mentioned that I’ve spent six years writing? It’s finally almost here, and you can preorder it right now. By preordering, you’ll get the book at a lower price than after publication, and you’ll be among the first in the world to read it.
Catalyst of Control is a dark sci-fi novel about an arms race to develop mind control technology, and it’s my favorite thing I’ve ever written. I hope you enjoy it.
And thanks for reading.
– Grayson
You can watch the video version of this post here. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
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