Don’t Let Perfection and Procrastination Steal Your Writing Success

“Writing happens when you stay consistent and keep encouraging yourself that it’s okay to put words on the page.”  - Rebecca Camarena, author

 

You’ve started your book and you’ve written a few pages. You’re on a roll and when you stop for the day you promise to write daily. But the next thing you know you haven’t written in days.

When you start writing each time you type a sentence, your inner editor cringes. You’re terrified you’re going to write something dreadful, so you don’t write anything. You stare at the blank page.

You may have even started to question whether you should be writing a book at all.

In your mind you wrote something great that first day and you consider yourself a great writer. Writers have this image of the literary greats sitting at their typewriters banging out their stories. You think they sit down and keep writing from the first page to the last. Since you want to emulate them you feel that you have to be perfect each time you write.

If this sounds familiar then you might be struggling with these common obstacles of perfectionism and procrastination. And yes, they go hand in hand. Trying to be perfect leads to procrastination.

But this mindset keeps you from growing. After all, you can’t improve your writing until you’ve actually written something. Rather than staying chained to the belief your work must be perfect, focus on creating that first draft.

Push yourself to see quantity versus quality in your writing, in your word count, or with your page count.

Give yourself permission to write a terrible book. When your inner editor criticizes you, remind her to wait her turn. She’ll get her chance to point out flaws when it’s time for you to do your revisions. In the meantime, keep writing.

Has perfection kept you from writing?

 

Who Am I

I'm author, inspiring book writing and publishing coach Rebecca Camarena and I would love to connect further with you to help you achieve your goals. I have helped in all aspects of book writing; from vision to concept to writing and publishing. If you are interested in taking the next step to publishing, please take a look at my services page and consider reaching out to me. I offer a 30-minute consultation.

Read my books here; www.rebeccacamarenabooks.com