I came across an old note of mine the other day: “If you find yourself getting stuck… here’s a simple solution! Write a little worse than you know you can. It’s so freeing!!” I’ve been teaching a writing class, and in the context of helping people write the best they can, I found myself (perhaps paradoxically) thrilled to encounter this advice. Of course, that usually happens when I need it myself.
It’s not that it’s about intentionally creating stuff that’s “bad” and you know it. No—it’s about allowing yourself the freedom from some arbitrary notion of perfection. We cannot always fly so close to the sun. Strangely, trying to create “our best work” can inhibit us from creating any work. Or it can get in the way to the point where you’re creating what you think you should be creating, rather than what is burning within you to be made into matter.
Take, for example, this Substack. Last week I re-shared an essay about my near-death experience, and I have been getting in my own way ever since. It’s not like I have another NDE to tell you about. And I’m not one of those experiencers who has returned with a mission to change the world (seemingly plotted out in detailed outline with action steps and well-placed affirmations).1 I can’t “top” my own NDE. And is this Substack really about near-death experiences? A bunch of new people signed up—are you actually going to want to read my musings on creativity and spirituality, rather than transcendent mystical experiences?
Then there’s this whole other angle, which is that I can’t really afford to continue writing weekly-ish pieces on here without, as they like to say in new age circles, financial exchange. Even the thought of asking for money drives my perfectionistic self right up the wall. Everything has to be extra specially THE BEST if I’m going to ask you to pay me. And I ought to look like I know what I’m doing! I ought to have a plan or at least a very good imitation of one!
So now my perfectionism is chasing its own tail, and you can imagine my inner kid sitting over on the sidelines, head in hands, saying sadly, I just want to create stuff.
Enter, like a refreshing breeze, the words I wrote myself three years ago. It doesn’t have to be as good as you think it does! Really! You can fix it later! Or…gasp…it might be fine just the way it is.
Often I think my life is so incredibly cyclic. An insight or understanding rises to the surface, then drifts away on the accumulation of time and other experiences and, I don’t know, crud, slipping away beneath the surface, only to rise back up again at the moment you need it (albeit leaving you staring a bit foolishly at your notebook/screen).
Perfect isn’t the enemy of good, I don’t think. It’s the enemy of interesting. The enemy of meaningfulness. The enemy of heart. An editor once told me that a draft I’d written was too controlled. It needed more mess, more raw edges, more of the slippery imperfect hot-cold chaos of real life—not because it wasn’t beautifully written, but because it needed to feel more like it mattered. Not to someone else, but to ME, the author. It needed to come more from the heart, from the gut, from the soles of the feet that carry us through this lovely, maddening, impersonal, not-very-gentle, baffling, joyful world.
I will leave you with a quote from one of my favorite books, Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert:
“…with all due respect and affection, I did not write this book for you; I wrote it for me. I wrote this book for my own pleasure, because I truly enjoy thinking about the subject of creativity. It’s enjoyable and useful for me to meditate on this topic. […]
It’s okay if your work is fun for you… It’s also okay if your work is healing for you, or fascinating for you, or redemptive for you, or if it’s maybe just a hobby that keeps you from going crazy. It’s even okay if your work is totally frivolous. That’s allowed. It’s all allowed.
Your own reasons to create are reason enough. … Do whatever brings you to life, then. Follow your own fascinations, obsessions, and compulsions. Trust them. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart.”
Maybe I will have to actually write another post about near-death experiences, because after studying them a little bit, I concluded that the secret is…dun dun dun…there is no conclusion. They are a Mystery, capital M, and I believe they’re meant to be. People have all sorts of NDEs… positive glowing understanding-the-meaning-of-the-world one-with-life NDEs, scary running from certain death in deep fear NDEs, baffling confusing apparently meaningless NDEs. The works. They have “positive” NDEs that scare the crap out of them and leave them afraid of death for life, and they have “negative” NDEs that should scare the crap out of them but instead leave them peaceful and joyful and unafraid of anything. Talk about paradox….