Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artistâs true friend. What people somehow (inadvertently, Iâm sure) forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are hereâand, by extension, what weâre supposed to be writing.
Related Quotes
Chekhov once said, âArt doesnât have to solve problems, it only has to formulate them correctly.â âFormulate them correctlyâ might be taken to mean: âmake us feel the problem fully, without denying any part of it.
Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you wonât have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who arenât even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while theyâre doing it.
Perfectionism is one way our muscles cramp. In some cases, we donât even know that the wounds and the cramping, are there, but both limit us. They keep us moving and writing in tight, worried ways. They keep us standing back or backing away from life, keep us from experiencing life in a naked and immediate way. So how do we break through them and get on?
They shouldnât be too perfect; perfect means shallow and unreal and fatally uninteresting. I like for them to have a nice sick sense of humor and to be concerned with important things, by which I mean that they are interested in political and psychological and spiritual matters. I want them to want to know who we are and what life is all about. I like them to be mentally ill in the same sorts of ways that I am; for instance, I have a friend who said one day, "I could resent the ocean if I tried," and realized that I love that in a guy. I like for them to have hopeâif a friend or a narrator reveals himself or herself to be hopeless too early on, I lose interest. It depresses me. It makes me overeat. I donât mind if a person has no hope if he or she is sufficiently funny about the whole thing, but then, this being able to be funny definitely speaks of a kind of hope, of buoyancy.
Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly. There will be many mistakes, many things to take out and others that need to be added. You just arenât always going to make the right decision.