No, it's not PERFECT!!

How anal are you when it comes to your writing?
Of course, as writers we do care about our work and if we don't like something usually we change it. But how important is it to you to read through your entire chapter, song, poem, etc and enjoy it, well, entirely?

Go ahead and post about anything else that's related to this sort of topic, too. Within reason of course!

I used to be super uptight about my writing, to the point where I didn't write anything for a couple months because it wasn't perfect, but now I'm much more lax about it. As people probably already know if you've actually read my writing, but I'll normally post something that hasn't been proofread by anyone except me, so there are plenty of holes and mistakes to be found. I'm pretty bad about proofreading my own stuff, so now I don't let it bother me if there is something wrong. I just thank the person for pointing it out, fix it, and move on.

The thread title

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This is so much my life.

Honest confession that I'm totally be willing to be berated for (I could use some punishment):

One of the two "main" stories I'm working on for publication, a Pokémon fanfic... has been in development for over six years, from worldbuilding onwards. Seven written chapters so far, none published, because I just can't. stop. into. revising. them. The revision number for chapter 3 is nineteen. NINETEEN.

Help.

solovino said:

One of the two "main" stories I'm working on for publication, a Pokémon fanfic... has been in development for over six years, from worldbuilding onwards. Seven written chapters so far, none published, because I just can't. stop. into. revising. them. The revision number for chapter 3 is nineteen. NINETEEN.

Help.

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I had the same problem myself with Pokemon fanfiction. I wrote the same story for well over ten years, never publishing what I wrote, because nothing was perfect about it. I wish I could help you with your problem, solovino, but I just stopped writing that story and moved on to a different project.

Which I'm more lax about. As I'm writing the first draft, I just let typos happen as they happen. Once I reach a point where I decide to edit, I go through once really well to catch any grammar mistakes, weird wording, or scenes that don't make sense. It takes about a month to go through a chapter.

After that, I read through the entire story once more a final time before posting it to a smaller audience to get some fresh eyes looking at the story. Then it hits a bigger audience.

I want to at least make sure that what the audience is reading is the best that I can do. It might not be perfect, but it's the best I can do.

I feel like I'm a bad writer for saying this, but I dislike going back and reading chapters that I wrote, just because I get highly annoyed at something I wrote five minutes ago and thought "THIS IS THE BEST HELL YAAH," and probably is still good. But if I wrote something that I know isn't consistent/doesn't "flow," I'll go back and bash Red Bull cans against my forehead until I get it right.

As for me, I am a bit of a perfectionist...

I've... been known to have countless drafts for a short story, even. Not even to mention that typos and grammer errors are a nightmare to me. You would think that by now I'd have toned it down, but not really. :/

There have been a few fics I finished a first/second draft but I'm not exactly happy with it so either I keep revising it or don't post it at all. I do have betas who give me advice on making my works better, but sometimes I still worry I'm not doing my best. I've been better posting my stories without revising too much, though.

Im very hard on myself. I reread constantly, delete things out, add in. Even when I'm 50+ pages into a story I still go back and reread the whole thing to make sure it's progressing realistically. I'm a big one when it comes to that... It has to be as realistic as it possibly can be.
I never post my fics though, unless a friend asks me to write something for them, I just have very high standards for myself. But recently my past 2 large fics have been great imo and my little drabbles as well.

O.M.G I am the worst perfectionist ever! I always end up redoing my chapters because I feel like I messed up. Usually, I get new ideas I want to try, and I can't ignore them. They end up nagging at me until I go through with them. It's one of my biggest struggles as a writer!

It's why I've never been able to finish any pieces of my writing. I try a bit, look at it. Think it's terrible and just run off to somewhere else to forget about my failure. Not a good thing if you have lofty ambitions for stories.

The hardest part for me is to write a beginning. I often change around the beginning of a story or RP post and might never even get truly happy with how it turns out. I just give up after a while and leaves it as it is xD So yeah, how much of a perfectionist I am depends also on what I'm writing. RP posts, I can live with it if they aren't pure magic. But reports or stories that I let others read, I really want it to be good.

Ugh, I feel like everything I write is just plain awful. n_n

Beginnings are just awful for me though, and so are conclusions. Everything else in the middle I can usually deal with just fine, but beginnings & endings are just the absolute hardest for me. :(

I normally just skim through a piece when I finish it to see if it's okay and to make sure I left nothing out or to add more in or to fix grammar mistakes I may have made and not caught as I was typing.

But all of that's just for stories, except the beginnings & endings issue. RPs I'm more lax on; if it's readable, I'll be fine with it if the grammar's not perfect. xD