Are you a perfectionist?

Before I started writing, I read several articles by writers complaining about their own perfectionism. One advised that when you were worrying about which word was exactly right and whether a comma should go here or there then you were ready to submit your manuscript. I was sceptical. If I ever got to that stage, I thought, I really wouldn’t care about a comma here or there.

 

I’ve always resisted proof reading. It is meticulous, which I am not. I’m much happier to have a go and live with the consequences. All through school I rarely read my work through before submitting it – much to the frustration of my teachers. Being critical so soon after I had invested that much effort into something was dispiriting: I wanted to tick it off the list, tell myself ‘well done’ and move on. Only after being a teacher myself and experiencing the frustration of marking ‘almost there’ work have I come round to the idea of proof reading. Now that I am trying to make a career of writing I am forcing myself to do it. 

Preparing Wild Rose to be made into an EBook, I am reading the manuscript more closely than I ever have before. It’s a new level of scrutiny. Now that I’m not reading for the story I see errors all over the place: sentences starting without capital letters, speech left lingering without closing speech marks, remnants of old characters long deleted. Then there are those pesky commas – here, there or not at all? The closer the manuscript gets to an audience outside my family, my agent or someone I’ve paid for critique, the more paranoid I become about leaving errors for critical eyes to find.

 In a sleep deprived state I also doubt myself. Late last night I spent longer than should have been necessary wondering whether it should be ‘pulled the door close’, or ‘pulled the door closed’. After repeating them too many times both options sounded like nonsense, like repeating ‘pyjamas’ over and over. But with limited time you just have to make a decision. Having few perfectionist tendencies makes this easier. I have to be pragmatic; there’s no point having a perfect manuscript that no one will ever see.

 I often wonder how perfectionists cope as parents. I try my best to work out what our daughter needs and how to balance cuddles with the washing up. But there’s a lot that slides by in the passing day. When bedtime comes and it’s shortly about to begin all over again there’s little time or inclination to review what’s already been done.

 

Which is just as well: there’s only so much perfectionism I can muster and it’s almost entirely devoted to commas at the moment.