The Creative Instinct

Here’s a sad story that’s stuck in my mind for many years. It’s about a never ending quest - a delusion that guaranteed frustration and failure.

It happened many years back at my first ever writing class, at the excellent WEA in Chesterfield. For those of you who’ve never heard of Chesterfield, it’s a little town in Derbyshire, England, celebrated for its one very outstanding imperfection - the crooked spire on its main church.

It was almost in the shadow of the spire that I met Peter and found out about his grand obsession - his soon to be perfect short story. I don’t know what the story was about, because being a proud perfectionist, Peter definitely wasn’t in the habit of handing out rough and ready drafts of his masterpiece to novices like me. Not that this was in any way rough and ready.

Peter, you see, knew all about writing. He’d studied it assiduously. He knew about things that at the time I’d never heard of: the perfect narrative crisis point, viewpoint, denouement - and things I’d heard of but didn’t understand - like where to put commas and full stops (it’s fair to say that I was quite a late learner). I was deeply impressed. I had so much to learn.

And then he explained to me his own approach to writing in a way that made it sound almost holy in its importance. He had this brilliant short story, and only when he’d crafted it to perfection would he move on to his next work.

How long, I asked, had he been crafting this short story? Over a year, he told me. A year? For a short story? That was really something. And when did he expect to complete it? Ah…well. There was so much more he needed to do - so many techniques he’d yet to master and apply before he could feel satisfied with the quality of his writing.

Did Peter ever complete his short story? Who knows? He was still on it two years later when I left the class. Maybe he’s still working on it.

This is an extreme story, I know, but perfectly true. You had to admire Peter’s devotion, but even way back in that very first class I knew there was something wrong here. I just didn’t realise how wrong. Because the more you examine the idea of perfectionism the less there is to like about it.

Here are just a few of the negative impacts the perfectionist mindset can have on your creative self.

1. It slows down or stops tangible creative output
2. It gives you an excuse for not producing
3. Because perfection is an illusion - it sets you up for failure
4. It limits your ability to gain skills and experiences
5. It reduces your willingness to take risks and make mistakes
6. It leads to low self-esteem and a lack of belief about your own artistic worth

And that’s just looking at your creative self. Perfectionism rarely stops there and can severely mess up every aspect of your life.

What’s the alternative? Excellence

Excellence is worth striving for. Excellence is inspiring. Excellence leads to prolific output and very positive feelings about yourself. It allows you to judge how well you’ve done from the perspective of where you are now. So you can produce excellence at your own current level of ability, feel justly satisfied with your current achievement and inspired to improve even more. Perfection never allows that.

How to escape the perfectionist straight-jacket

1. Change your attitude to it, or at least begin to change it. Recognise the perfectionist stance as an impediment to your happiness, self esteem and success.
2. Stop yourself in your tracks whenever you hear yourself saying or thinking that you are a perfectionist. Replace the thought with a positive statement about producing work of excellence.
3. Dare to make mistakes. Dare to be wrong.
4. Recognise that in the entire population of the planet, you are the only person who expects you to be perfect.
5. Re-assess past achievements in terms of excellence and learning rather than failed perfection.
6. Accept compliments gracefully. Perfectionists will often deflect compliments with answers like - it was nothing - or - I was lucky. Instead, smile and thank the person for their kindness.

In a perfect world every one of us would be perfect. But in this world nobody’s perfec.

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