About a week ago, I read an awesome poem on Instagram. I follow a lot of poets on there, and I collect prompts and post my own stuff and generally try to participate in the poetry community when I can. Anyway, this poem inspired me, and I commented to the poet that I “might write an after poem inspired by it.” (An “after poem” is basically that — a poem inspired by another poem, or a response to it). The poet was obviously excited and happy to read that because she said, “Please, please do!”
So I did. The poem was on “All the Places I’ve Lost Myself.” But my version didn’t quite hit the mark; in fact, I believe I veered completely off course. As one does. Oops? I wasn’t happy with it. Well, it wasn’t bad per se. It just wasn’t what I was hoping for as an after poem. If you recall, these Instagram poems are part of my Bad Poetry Project, so they don’t have to be perfect. But all of a sudden, the perfectionism monster reared its ugly head.
One revision, I told myself. Just to get it right. I had some better ideas. I was sure I could nail it. And…I almost did? But not quite. Not quite. Now, here’s the problem. I am a total perfectionist. I know this about myself. I’m not allowed to make mistakes, not allowed to be anything less than 100% perfect. Why? I suspect trauma — being bullied, feeling not good enough, having a former boss who’d crucify me if I dare screwed up…was traumatizing. So I learned…thou shalt not be anything less than perfect. Ever. Over the years, I suspect it’s gotten worse. Especially with my current job, because I’ve carried over that fear of failure even though I no longer have that boss. In fact, I have awesome, great bosses now who wouldn’t do that to me — but it doesn’t matter. I still have that voice in my head that demands perfection.
So, everything in my life is touched by this, my writing included. I once revised a book no less than ten times for agents and promptly killed my love for writing in the process. This is how Fey Touched came about. My writer friends told me to stop this insanity and work on something else for awhile. That something was Fey Touched, a for-fun project that I hadn’t even planned on publishing at first. Incidentally, the book that I revised ten times? It’s still not published. However, I did submit it to a publisher several years ago. It was rejected, but I did try. I want to run it through another revision, mostly to clean some things up since it’s been something like ten years now, but I’m mostly done with it. Really! It will be a future TDP release.
Whatever became of this poem, you ask? Well, I revised it another time. Bangs head on keyboard. It’s close. It’s very close. And I got some cool possibilities for other poems out of the revisions. So all is not lost. I think it’s almost there. It might be there, actually. I’m just…well, I need to just post it already! I need to say NO to perfectionism and just do it, because this poem will never see the light of day otherwise. I swear, I am my worst enemy sometimes.
(If I do, I will link it here so you can read it).
Holly Lisle, one of my favorite authors, says, “Perfect is the enemy of the good.” In other words, in striving for perfection, you may never get the Thing out there (like my poem or that ten-times-revised book sitting on my hard drive collecting dust) but if you strive for good, best you can do at the time, it’s good enough — get it out there anyway. It’s not doing any good on your hard drive. But if it’s good enough — get it out there where it can be enjoyed, right?
So, yeah. I need to remember that. It’s hard, but I am trying. Every day.