Making Writing More Fun – Escaping The Pit Of Perfectionism

The greatest enemy isn't an outside force, but the person staring back at you in the mirror. Or your amygdala. Fear, to be more precise. Especially fear that's not real.

In this blog post I discussed how I've been writing for two years, but felt I haven't found "my way" of writing yet. Less about my voice, more about the method of writing. I asked myself: "What would this look like if it were fun?"

I've cracked the code. At least part of it.

But it started with another realization which wasn't about writing at all, but about the end result of it. Because what stood most in my way when it comes to writing was my own fault. A default setting that had been turned on in my brain ever since I was a child.

Yes, you guessed it: the good old malady of perfectionism.

Perfectionism is a tricky circuit. It wants you to succeed by making you fear failure. But the finished work in your imagination can never match what becomes reality. Also, it creates this fear mostly by the shame you will feel about the failure, not about the actual failure itself.

All of these feelings create a cocktail of apprehension. So the brain starts doing its other job too well: wanting to keep you alive. Because stress and anxiety must mean danger, it makes the endeavor seem so great that you never start in the first place.

I was at the beginning of my making-it-more-fun journey, and the first roadblock was already a big one.

So, how could we eliminate the stress created by all these thoughts?

By creating stress.

Please, calm down meditation teachers of the world! Instead of mantra-maiming me, take a conscious breath and hear my solution.

There's this great app I found called Dangerous Writing App. The premise is simple: choose a writing prompt and a session length. Sounds straightforward, right? But here's the twist: if you stop typing for more than five seconds, all your writing will be lost.

No pressure.

If you struggle with starting or perfectionism, you have to try it. It really changed how I approach writing.

What I've realized is this: don't try to play against your brain. Changing a simple habit and going against the wiring of your brain are different things. Perfectionism can be phenomenal when it comes to editing, but not for flow-writing.

Out of all things, why did a different kind of stress solve me stressing myself too much?

From what I can tell, it's these two factors:

It creates urgency: When you see the text you've just invested the last minutes in vanish, it makes you not want to lose your progress. The only solution is to keep going. The solution to not having to start over again is therefore agency, which is the exact thing perfectionism inhibits.

Gamification: Who would've thought the great corporate buzzword of 2016 was going to make a comeback? When everybody, their grandmother, and their dog preached about implementing gamification into their products and services, it was a match made in commerce hell. But it works wonders here! It probably was an accident, but the design of the app makes exact use of two core game principles: having a clear goal and a feedback loop. The goal is to keep going – just don't stop writing. The feedback loop is the vanishing of your words – write faster!

Finding Dangerous Writing App was already a huge boon, and I'm far from done. Because next week, I want to explore another part of my brain wiring: visualization.