It seems perfect to write this today because, as a perfectionist who is writing a book, I need to give myself some good advice. You see, I have written six chapters in six days. When I say written, they are a rough draft, but still, they are done for now. I am ready to move on to chapter 7, but I want to meticulously edit these chapters at the same time. I have already fiddled with my outline several times, and I think this is it.
When I look from the outside in, I see myself striving for something so exquisite, so flawless, so utterly perfect that it will be worthy of the vision in my mind.
I’ve worked with countless perfectionist writers. I want to share something that might initially horrify you but will ultimately liberate you: your perfectionism isn’t helping your book – it’s killing it. The very trait that makes you want to create something beautiful is the same trait that prevents you from completing anything at all.
But here’s the hope buried in this hard truth. Perfectionism can be harnessed and redirected. You don’t have to stop being a perfectionist to finish your book. You just need to become a strategic perfectionist rather than a paralysing one.
Ok, so that’s my first lesson to me over…
The Perfectionist’s Paradox
The central paradox of perfectionist writers is this: the desire to create something perfect prevents the creation of anything complete. In pursuing the flawless book, perfectionists often end up with no book at all.
This happens because perfectionism creates impossible standards that nothing can meet, especially not a first draft, a first book, or a first attempt at sharing vulnerable truths with the world. The perfectionist’s mental image of their book is always more polished than anything they could possibly produce, creating a gap so wide that every actual word feels inadequate.
The paradox deepens when we realise that perfect books don’t exist. Even the most celebrated works of nonfiction have flaws, limitations, and things their authors would change if they could. The books we revere as perfect seem that way partly because they were completed and released into the world, where they could find their readers and make their impact.
Your unfinished, perfect book can’t help anyone. A finished imperfect book can change lives. Yay to that.
Understanding Your Perfectionist Patterns
Before we can redirect your perfectionism, we need to understand how it manifests in your writing process. Perfectionist writers typically get stuck in several predictable patterns:
The Endless Research Loop: You convince yourself you need just one more source, one more expert interview, one more credential before you’re qualified to write. Research becomes a comfortable form of procrastination because it feels productive while avoiding the vulnerability of actual writing. – I have been guilty of that. This time around, I am writing endless stories in my journal, which are for referencing in each chapter, but I have this thing in my head that says you, dear reader, need to read all the stories in all of their gory detail to understand what I have been through. I know it’s not true…
The Outline Obsession: You perfect and re-perfect your chapter structure, create detailed outlines, and plan every paragraph before writing. While planning is valuable, it becomes perfectionist avoidance when you never feel ready to move from planning to writing. Yep – I have many outlines for this book, and now I have the perfect one…
The Opening Sentence Prison: You spend weeks rewriting the perfect first line, believing that everything else will flow once you get this exactly right. Meanwhile, the rest of your book remains unwritten. Not me, thankfully.
The Revision Rabbit Hole: You revise your first chapter endlessly before writing your second, edit your introduction perpetually before tackling your conclusion, and perfect each section before moving to the next. I am fighting this urge.
The Comparison Catastrophe: You read other books in your field and become convinced that your work could never measure up, leading to either abandonment of the project or complete restarts that attempt to mimic what you admire. Not me, it’s a waste of time.
The All-or-Nothing Mentality: You believe that if you can’t write for hours in perfect conditions, there’s no point in writing at all. This leads to waiting for ideal circumstances that never arrive.
The Strategic Perfectionist’s Toolkit
The goal isn’t to eliminate your perfectionist tendencies; they’re part of what will make your book excellent. The goal is to redirect them strategically so they serve your completion rather than sabotaging it.
Phase-Based Perfectionism: Instead of trying to perfect everything simultaneously, assign your perfectionist energy to specific phases. Be messy in your first draft, structural in your second, detailed in your third, and polished in your final edit. This allows you to satisfy your perfectionist nature while making progress. I am making myself do this.
The Good Enough Draft: Establish what “good enough” looks like for each stage. Your first draft just needs to exist and contain your main ideas. Your second draft needs to be structurally sound. Your third draft needs to be clear and engaging. Only your final draft needs to approach your perfectionist standards.
Time-Boxing: Set specific time limits for perfectionist activities. Give yourself thirty minutes to perfect that paragraph, then move on regardless of whether it meets your impossible standards. This prevents endless tinkering whilst honouring your need for quality.
The Perfection Parking Lot: Keep a separate document for all the perfect ideas, elegant phrases, and brilliant insights that occur to you while writing. Instead of stopping to perfect them immediately, capture them quickly and return to your main writing. You can incorporate the best ones during revision.
Minimum Viable Chapters: Borrow from startup methodology and create minimum viable versions of each chapter – the simplest version that serves your reader and conveys your message. You can always enhance them later, but you can’t enhance what doesn’t exist.
The 80% Rule for Perfectionists
Here’s a revolutionary concept for perfectionist writers: aim for 80% of your vision rather than 100%. This isn’t settling for mediocrity – it’s recognising that 80% of an impossible standard is often 120% of what most books achieve.
The 80% rule works because:
- It’s completable: 80% is achievable, meaning you can finish something. It’s excellent: 80% of a perfectionist’s vision is typically better than most people’s 100%.
- It’s improvable: You can always enhance an 80% book, but you can’t improve a 0% book that never gets written.
- It’s publishable: Readers can benefit from 80% of your wisdom, but they can’t benefit from the 100% that remains locked in your head.
When perfectionist writers embrace the 80% rule, something magical happens: they discover that their 80% is actually quite brilliant, and the gap between their 80% and their imagined 100% is much smaller than they thought.
The Perfectionist’s Completion Strategy
Draft Zero: Before you even think about writing your “first” draft, write a Draft Zero. This is a completely messy, stream-of-consciousness dump of everything you want to say. Don’t worry about structure, eloquence, or coherence. Just get everything out. This satisfies your need to capture all your ideas whilst removing the pressure to do it perfectly. I highly recommend this. I sit with the chapter before I go to sleep and plot a few ideas. In the morning, I write everything that needs to come out in my journal. Next, I write draft zero and then tart it up.
The Skeleton First: Write the skeleton of your entire book before fleshing out any chapter. Create basic versions of every chapter- just the main points, key stories, and essential messages. This gives you a complete structure to perfect rather than perfect fragments with no context. I’ll ask my writers to write:
- This chapter is about
- What the reader will get from this
- Why this chapter is important
Scheduled Perfectionism: Designate specific times for perfectionist revision. Perhaps Sunday mornings are for polishing prose, or the last hour of each writing session is for refining what you’ve written. This channels your perfectionist energy without letting it take over your entire process.
The Two-Pass System: Make two passes through each chapter. A content pass (getting the ideas right) and a writing pass (getting the words right). Don’t try to do both simultaneously. Your perfectionist brain can focus fully on one aspect at a time.
Progress Over Polish: Measure success by progress through your entire book rather than the perfection of individual sections. It’s better to have rough drafts of all twelve chapters than three perfect chapters and nine unwritten ones.
This ends part one of this.
So, what now? If you’re nodding along, recognising your own perfectionist tendencies in these patterns, take this as your permission slip. Start messy. Let it be rough, raw, and real -because done is far more powerful than perfect.
Pick one strategy from this guide and put it into practice today. Whether it’s the 80% rule, a Draft Zero, or simply writing one “good enough” sentence, progress is your new gold standard.
And if this spoke to you, stay tuned for Part Two – because we’re just getting started.
PS: I am naturally squirming at myself because I must follow my own advice and write chapter 7 today.
