“Perfectionism has nothing to do with getting it right. It has nothing to do with fixing things. It has nothing to do with standards. Perfectionism is a refusal to let yourself move ahead. It is a loop—an obsessive, debilitating closed system that causes you to get stuck in the details of what you are writing or painting or making and to lose sight of the whole.”

Julia Cameron – The Artist’s Way 

I am a perfectionist.

I typed, deleted, and retyped that sentence several times before deciding it was the best way to start this post.  As a perfectionist, I’m always trying to get everything I write perfect. My husband teases that it takes me twenty minutes to respond to text message because I constantly revise and edit what I write.

In some ways that’s a good habit for a writer. After all, the magic of writing happens in revision. But the problem comes when you can’t move on. You labor over a sentence or paragraph or section for so long that you lose sight of the whole piece.  And if that isn’t the problem, then it’s an issue of the whole piece never being good enough. You work on it and work it, trying to get it to a standard of perfection that doesn’t exist. And in the meantime you lose any semblance of creativity.

Well, that’s exactly where I was two months ago. After several rejection letters, I became obsessed with revising one of my short stories. I worked on it for a while and then sent it to one of my writing groups. Then I incorporated their suggestions before sending it to my other writing group. And after I got their feedback, I decided I was wasting my time and stuck the whole thing in a drawer.  When I sat down to work on other things, I felt drained and out of ideas.

As fate would have it, I got an email from a local independent bookstore about an Artist’s Way class.

The Artist’s Way, written by Julia Cameron, is a course in discovering or recovering your creative self.  It’s broken up into twelve weeks and each week has different activities and exercises that are supposed to help you get into touch with your own creativity. However, the foundation of the course is built around the basic tools of morning pages and artist dates. Morning pages are three 8 ½ x 11 hand written pages that capture your thoughts when you first wake up.  And the artist date is specific time set aside weekly to nurture your creative consciousness.

I’d tried the course before, but never completed it. So I knew it was exactly what I needed.

Once I started the class, I faithfully wrote my morning pages. Tapping into my first thoughts has opened up my thinking and led me to some amazing epiphanies. I look forward to my journaling time. The artist dates have been a bit harder to negotiate, but I have managed to go on a few. One of my favorite artist dates is when I went to see Mirror, Mirror by myself.  As a young girl, I loved fairy tales, especially Cinderella. And though Snow White wasn’t my favorite princess as a kid, I had a blast watching the movie with all the fancy dresses and elaborate castles while I ate M&Ms all by myself.

After a few weeks of The Artist Way, I began to experiment again with my writing. I even wrote a few vignettes that just may be the beginning of a memoir.  I pulled out my camera and began to take picture. Who would have thought peeling paint on a fire hydrant would be so inspiring?

My creative self came back to life. And when I saw an adult painting station at an art fair, I couldn’t resist. I had to give it a try. As my brush slid across the canvas, I felt free.

The next week I bought myself some paints and canvases. But as I sat at the kitchen table painting it occurred to me that I didn’t really know what I was doing. I wondered if maybe I should take a few classes so that I could learn how to paint correctly. And that is when it hit me. I didn’t need to know how to do it right. I simply had to fully experience the moment. The magic is in the process.

Perfectionism has many forms. And it’s our job not to get hung up in trying to achieve some imagined sense of perfection. As artist we have to give ourselves permission to create freely. We have to focus our attention more on the process than the product. Nothing dams up the creative flow like obsessing over what others will think of our work. So it may not be perfect. But it will express who you are at the moment. And that is what art is about – self-expression.

I finished my painting without another thought about taking an art class. Instead, I just enjoyed playing in the paint.

I’ve also revised my short story again, but this time I opened myself up to the flow. I lingered in the moment and enjoyed the process.  And by George, I think I’ve finally got the piece I’ve been aiming for.

We will never produce our best work through perfectionism.  Creativity flows when we allow ourselves to be in the moment. And that’s when we have our best shot of creating a masterpiece.