Recently a colleague posted to an online editors’ forum: “How do you tell a client who keeps tinkering to just stop?” Her client’s tinkering was not improving the manuscript. In some cases it was making things worse.
Her client was having a hard time letting go, and with good reason: letting go is hard. Off the top of my head I can think of several excellent manuscripts that are languishing in their authors’ desk drawers or on their hard drives because their authors can’t let them go.
The subject has been on my mind lately because I’m in the process of making an ebook out of my novel, The Mud of the Place. The print version came out in 2008. My final draft was a Word file. The proofs were in PDF. Plenty of corrections and tweaks were made on the proofs. My first step was to transfer all of them to the final-draft Word file. Now I’m proofreading the Word file from which the ebook will be created.
In proofreading mode I’m looking for typos and stylistic inconsistencies. I am not looking to change or rearrange any of the words. Yes, a few times I’ve paused at a word and thought that another word might be better. But I want the text of the ebook edition to be identical to that of the print edition. If I find an error — a genuine, bona fide error — I will fix it.
But the time for tinkering is past, long past.
The urge to keep tinkering is often a sign that Perfectionista is gripping your shoulder and scaring you half to death with her what-ifs. What if you’ve left something out? What if you’ve made a mistake? What if your whole book is a mistake? What if everyone hates your book? What if everyone thinks you’re stupid?
Sometimes Perfectionista keeps you from writing. Other times she wants you to tinker endlessly with what you’ve already written. Whatever she’s up to, the way to loosen her grip is the same: Lower your standards. And no, that doesn’t mean “do shoddy work.” It means that no matter how much tinkering you do, your work is never going to be perfect — and even if it is, someone‘s not gonna like it. You can’t control what anybody else thinks.
Letting go takes practice. You’ve got to have confidence in your work — that takes practice too. If you’ve been sharing your work in a workshop or a writers’ group or with readers who’ll give you honest feedback, you’re well on the way. Sharing your work, after all, is a kind of letting go.
Deadlines can be a big help. When the clock or the calendar says you’re done, you’re done. The train is leaving the station and your story’s on it. When you see your story in print, a few hours or days or weeks later, you probably see something you would have done differently, but the chances are excellent that it’s fine as is.
Especially if you have a good editor acting as your safety net.
And one last thing: It’s easier to let go of one work when you’re hard at work on something new. The new story or essay or book probably won’t leave you much energy to obsess about the one that’s ready to leave home. Kiss it goodbye and move on.
Not ready to let go: The late Rhodry (1994–2008), right, and his buddy Rosie.
Write Through It 
Reblogged this on My Passion's Pen and commented:
Really good stuff.
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Thanks! I’m going to check out your blog. 🙂
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Perfectionista…love it!! Now I know who to yell at when I just can’t seem to walk away and know I should. Thanks for that!!
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Perfectionista and I have been trying to outsmart each other for years. When I blog about her, she usually goes off to preen in the mirror and leaves me alone — for a while.
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Ha! Great visual! Perfectionista seems to like to put her pretty little fingers into many aspects of my life. The times I think I’m making it through something, anything without her overbearing insistance, she saunters in and points to every last thing that is not to her ‘standards.’ Sometimes I have the strength to tune her out. Other times, I cower in the corner like a good servant and do her bidding…lol.
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It’s hard to read something you wrote a while ago and not find something you wish you hadn’t said – or wish you had said…….
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Oh yeah. After enough time has passed, though, it often feels as though another me wrote the thing and I better not mess with it. I seem to have reached that point with Mud of the Place. Whew. It also helps that the current project is going well.
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As an editor I also suffer from Perfectionista attacks. That’s why I feel no satisfaction when I “finish” a project and reluctantly send it back to the client.
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This is the tricky thing about editing: It lures in us perfectionistic picky-bitch types then whacks us over the head with the knowledge that perfection is impossible. 🙂
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Excellent post,as usual. I sometimes want to go back and revisit everything of mine that’s in print. If only I changed a phrase here, and one there. . .but, as you say, the cure is to be working on something new.
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The best advice you give is to work in a new piece, letting the previous finished manuscript go or at least simmer a bit before sending it away for publication. Looking forward to reading your second part on the topic. 😊
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I agree. The writers I know who’ve had the worst problem with this are usually the ones who’ve put all their eggs in one basket, so to speak. (There’s an idiom for you! 😉 )That one project gets invested with too much — it’s no longer just a novel, it’s my future, my whole worth as a human being, etc., etc.
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😊
There is a perfect English translation for this idiom: Ne pas mettre tous ses œufs dans le même panier!
Writing something different also helps to move on and pond up the creative part of our brain, which can get rusted if we stick to the same kind of stories. See you.
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I think French-speakers and English-speakers have had similar experiences with oeufs/eggs!
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