Perfectionism is an Unattainable Goal
I finished the book and I didn’t. I mean, I finally typed The End. The villains of the piece are dead, the victims avenged as far as possible, short of resurrection and giving them back the lives that were stolen from them. Even my world where magic works far more overtly than it does in ours does not stretch that far. Justice has been served, or at least the public at large is safe from the killers. The mystery is solved. There are a few loose ends that I forgot to tidy up, but there always are in a book this large. Tidying up is what second drafts are for, and therein lies the problem.
Parts of Crimson Death are done, so very done. I got stuck a couple of times in this book, forgetting my own rules of writing and started rewriting before I had a first draft. Some writers can do that, I cannot. If I start rewriting before I have a finished draft perfectionism sets in and I stall. My creative ship gets trapped in the doldrums of perfectionism which leads to doubt, which leads to me second-guessing myself and that is death to a first draft of a novel, at least for me. My first instinct is usually right, after writing over forty books I know this, but still there is that temptation to get caught in making things – perfect.
When I finally got a room of my own as an office, I put a sign above my desk that read, “Perfectionism is an Unattainable Goal.” But I purposefully spelled perfectionism wrong. I believe I spelled it, “Perfactinisom”, or something like that so that everyday as I sat down to write I would be forced to look at the word that represented all my desire and frustration spelled so terribly imperfectly. It drove me mad to have to stare at that sign spelled so badly. But it forced me to stare one of my worst issues in the face everyday, and to begin to let it go. It was hard to get caught up in that perfectionistic cycle when I was staring at that damn sign every day, so it did its job. When I moved from that house after ten years I never had to put the same sign above my desk again, because the lesson had sunk in deep and hard. Though after Crimson Death I may have to revisit the lesson, because I have never fallen into the perfectionism trap so often in a book since those early days.
I’m not sure why that kept catching me again after all this time, but I know one of the other reasons that Crimson Death was such a hard write – research. Now, I’m a stickler for research, so much so that I’ve been told by editors and publishers in New York that I do more research for my fiction than most writers do for their nonfiction. Now, first of all that thought sort of frightened me, because I can’t image how crazy pants I’d go on research if I was doing a nonfiction book, since I go to such lengths for my fiction. I write mysteries but there’s always some supernatural element in my stories, so I write about vampires, zombies, ghouls, werewolves, and shapeshifters of all kinds. Some people think that because I write fantasy, horror, and science fiction that I can do less research, because magic, hand-wavyum, it’s fantasy after all so just making things up is all right, right? No, absolutely not, at least to me. One of my rules is that the more fantastical your storyline, the more solid your real world facts have to be because you have to help the reader believe in your monsters by making sure the real facts are right. The more unreal your world, or plot, the more solid your real world has to be, because if the reader catches you wrong on a fact that they know, then they won’t believe in your zombies or vampires. This is especially true if they are an expert on guns, police work, the military, voodoo as a religion, which are just some of the topics that I’ve used in my books. I’ve had high praise from gun experts and police at the accuracy of my research, which makes it all worth it. Because trust me, someone that will read your book is an expert in any real world fact that you use. If you get it wrong, they will let you know.
The problem with Crimson Death was that a majority of the book is set in Ireland which I’d never visited. So first we went to Ireland this summer, which was amazing and cool and totally not what I expected. In fact, Ireland and its gun laws, its difference in attitude between American police and Irish police, totally threw my plot for Crimson Death into the wind.
I never really recovered from the comparison of reality to my fictional world. Or rather, I didn’t figure out how to balance the two until late in the writing of the book. I’ve never had a book jell so late in the process before, and jell in such a way that I had to add so many new scenes. It’s not like me at all as a writer, so what happened? I messed with my process, my writing process. One of your jobs as an artist is to figure out how you work best, what your muse needs to feel comfortable and happy to play with you. I think I broke nearly every part of my writing process on this book, because I kept saying, that’s silly, I know how to write a book, I don’t need to do that anymore. Yeah, maybe needing an entire wall of my office so I can storyboard the book with sticky notes is silly, but it works for me and has worked for me for over twenty years, but for this book I took down my sticky notes and tried to do it without them. Never again, because it’s part of my process. It helps me think, helps me organize and plot. It works for me, and if it works for me as a writer I need to honor that and use it.
I know I’m a morning writer, but I kept not getting to my desk first thing. I know that when I first get up and head for my desk that it is deadly for me to talk to anyone about anything but the book. I can’t text, call, check email, nothing until I have at least a start on the day’s writing. But I tried to have breakfast before I wrote for the day. It’s healthier, right? Maybe, but it’s killing my muse and me. I don’t know a solution between healthy eating and my art, but I do know that if I take time to eat breakfast with my lovely family that my page count for the day goes down or doesn’t happen at all.
I actually learned something new about my process on the last book I wrote, Dead Ice, and had it reconfirmed with Crimson Death. Where I am writing when the book takes off, and for me that means hitting multiple days when I do twenty pages at a sitting in two to five hours, then I need to stay there until the book is done. Furthermore whatever tea I am drinking, stock up because the taste of it will help me stay in the book and write faster. If there was a scented candle burning early on then I need to keep burning that kind of candle until I’m done. I am a very sensual writer, so taste, touch, temperature, everything about my surroundings gets melded into the writing of a novel. It may not be on the page people read, but it’s in my head and in my muse. Whatever divine spark helps me write, once I hit a certain point in a a book I need to take note of everything I’m doing and just keep doing it. I’ll even eat the same thing over and over towards the end of a book especially. Everything feeds into me staying in the world, the voice, the flow of that book.
Remember when I said that Crimson Death was set in Ireland? I did research there, but I also started writing the book. In Dublin I hit multiple days of fifteen to twenty pages, but we were scheduled to go over to England and then home. I hadn’t budgeted time to sit for months in Ireland. I hadn’t planned on writing the book there, or dreamed that it would kick into high gear in the middle of the research, but it did. I know I am a sensual writer and very entwined with my environment, so it was logical that a book that would be largely set in Ireland would want to be written there, right? Well, yes, in retrospect it’s logical for the type of writer I am, but it caught me completely off guard when it happened. I had my first English convention to attend, and my first signing in England, and I was researching another book which would be set in that country. I was trying to research two different books at the same time, and that would have been fine if I hadn’t started writing the first one while I was still researching both of them. It was wrenching to stop writing on Crimson Death so I could do all the planned events in England. I had a great time doing them, but I never wrote in England on the book as well as I had in Dublin. I believe that if I could have stayed there and just kept writing that the book would have been finished in record time, or at least long before the deadline.
I’ve never tried to do this much research on a book that I was writing at the same time. If I could do it over again I would do the research, let myself think on it and make notes for a year, and I’d be publishing a different book this summer, one that was set in America in places I know very well and have written about before, but that was not what I’d planned or told my publisher. This was going to be the Damian book, the Irish book, and by the time I realized I’d bitten off more research than I knew how to digest in the time I had allowed to write the book, it was far too late to back out. I was committed, so I did the best I could, but I have more research than any one book can hold. I’m already making notes about another novel of some kind set in Ireland because I’ve learned so much and am still mulling over some of what I learned.
If I go to another country I can do research, but I can’t start writing the meat of the book unless I have planned my life so I can stay in that country until the book is complete. If I go to that country with a plot already in my head and the research doesn’t match it, then write a different book. One of the things that slowed me down was that I tried to do as much of the original plot as possible with the new research mingled in, which didn’t work at first. I was nearly done with the book before I figured out the mix of fiction to fact that worked for the plot, the characters, me, and my muse. Oddly, I wrote very well in Dublin, but I’ve never written well in London, or New York. I write very well by the ocean, or a large lake, or with a stream or river running by my office. My muse likes water. She also likes mountains, though I have yet to be in the mountains long enough to write an entire book. I hope to try someday. My muse also loves a view of trees, so forest works, too. I think an older style orchard would work just as well, but again I’ve never had a chance to write looking out at an orchard, so maybe wilder trees work better for her.
I know I write better with an office animal. I wrote my first novel with my cockatiel, Baby Bird, on my shoulder, and subsequent books with our pug, Pugsley. I have had at least one pug with me for over twenty years. We are between pugs having lost our last pug, Sasquatch, at age fourteen, but we have two Japanese chins and two mixed breed dogs that are much bigger than the chins. Three of the dogs are sleeping around my office as I type this and I write better with animals around me. This is the first book I’ve written without Sasquatch and I missed him terribly. I think it was actually one of the reasons Crimson Death wrote so slowly. I’d have to check, but I’m wondering if some of my past books that wrote slower than normal followed the death of a long time pet that came to work with me everyday.
I didn’t break my writing process apart on purpose, but I’m always a big believer in trying new things. Sometimes it works amazingly well and I can scale to new heights, but sometimes it doesn’t work at all. Sometimes trying the new thing makes me crash and burn, never pleasant, but I learn from the crash as much or more than I learn when I soar. For instance, I never want to write another book on a MAC computer, this was my first time attempting it, and I want my PC back! Though I love my iPad and wrote most of Dead Ice on it. But let me add that I haven’t enjoyed working on my iPad as much since they forced me to upgrade and I couldn’t find a protective cover for it that allowed me to orient it vertically and not horizontally while plugged in and charging. I hate working on the screen in the horizontal position and mourn my vertical screen, but the protective cover I got for it is not easy on and off, and the more often I skin my iPad the more chances I have to break it. Think I’m being overly cautious? I killed four iPhones before I got a LifeProof case for it. Now the cases break before my phone, which is fabulous! I’d get a LifeProof case for my iPad, but it doesn’t prop up for work easily enough for me. This is also the first book I’ve written without my big desk against the one wall. I’d stopped using it, and learned last year in the tropics that a very small desk did me just fine, but that was with a view of the ocean and a very different work space, here in St. Louis maybe I need that bigger desk? But now I have more shelves for research books in my office, which I needed. I’m beginning to wonder if we changed too much of my office around while I was trying to write this book. I like how open the room is now, but now I know to leave my physical environment absolutely static until a book is finished.
So, I’ve learned a lot of what not to do while I write a book. Some of it I already knew, but a type of arrogance, or boredom sets in if you do any job too long, and you begin to think I don’t need all these bells and whistles. I know my craft. I got this! I do, but writing is a mysterious job and once you find a process that works for you and your muse, you probably shouldn’t screw with it. I’ve learned it the hard way more than once, and now I’ve learned it again. I still have to rewrite/edit Crimson Death and make my deadline which is so close I can feel it’s hot breath on the back of my neck. I have made my job exponentially harder by trying to change so much of how my writing process works. I have not recovered from it, but the book is somehow limping towards the finish. Whether you call your muse a divine spark, inspiration, talent, genius, or you think that certain lover is what you need at your side – honor it. If you write better in a room with blue walls, paint your office blue. If a water view helps you create, find a place with that view. If you need a dark room with no windows because isolation feeds your muse, then find that dark corner and write. If you’re a morning writer get up and get going. If you write best late at night then stay up and do that. Whatever time works best for your muse figure it out and guard that time like it’s the secret formula to the secret sauce, because for you as a writer it absolutely is the secret to your productivity. Whatever feeds your muse and helps the words flow, own it, remember it, and once you get the process down stop fucking with it.
34 thoughts on “Perfectionism is an Unattainable Goal”
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I love these insights! One of the reasons your books rank in my favorites is BECAUSE your world building is so solid. The rules for the characters don’t change without valid reasons being given for said change. You are amazing! V””V
I am not a writer but I am definitely a big reader and I am caught up in all of your books so it is very interesting to me when you tell us all a part of your life and how you go about getting your books done so all of your fans can enjoy them. I am looking forward to reading Damian’s book and all the rest that you are thinking up for us to enjoy.
Thank you for an amazing series that I hope does not end for a very long time.
Sounds like good advice for a lot of things, Looking forward to your next books.
I can’t wait to see what Anita and Damian have in store for us. I always look forward to your new books and have withdrawls when I know its out. I try to wait for the paperback but with your last 3 Anita Blake novels I have not been able to contain my curiosity and buying that book is all I can think about. It’s literally like my own personal drug (but much healthier) that I have to have or it drives me mad and it makes me grumpy as my husband tells me. I got Guilty Pleasures as a gift from my sister when she was getting ready to move and she gave me all the books she had. I picked that book up and fell in love with Anita from the first page. I need her in my life. I cry when she cries, I smile when she smiles, I’m pissed when she’s pissed. She is so real to me and I can’t thank you enough for bringing to life my most favorite series and the plethera of characters. To be honest my life would be very different without it. You are a wonderful writer and I thank you for continuing to bring me and so many of your other fans our regular dose weather it be with Merry or Anita. I hope you come and do a book signing in Utah one tour so I can meet my idol and most favorite author. Please continue doing what you do because I know I will be a fan forever. Thank you.
? I am so thrilled for you L! I was worried for a while, I don’t know what it’s like to be Book Blocked, but I know what Song Block feels like! I Love your Quote? it is unattainable , as a goal or in life! Perfectionism is not real. Even in a Fantasy ! Nor would most of us fans of your books, Anita, and her tribe want you to feel like you have to be! We love your craft , your style and your spirit ? T
Love the insight and can’t wait for the next book :-). You and your muse are amazing!!!!
Love your work, and your imagination, thank you for sharing both with us, your fans
Thanks for this post Laurell, I really enjoyed reading it. And I am sorry that I did not know you were in England for a convention, as I would have done my very best to get there from Holland just to meet you and have you sign my favourite Anita book.
You should definitely come over to the West coast for your mountain enjoyment. Think of the Rockies. Clear clean crisp air, a beautiful lake with the scenery of the mountains in the background. Forest as far as your eyes can see. Birds, deer, heck even mountain lions nearby. A perfect place to write a book! Lake Almanor,CA
Very good advice and since I’m starting the process of writing my first book, it came at the perfect time. Looking forward to your newest, the way I’ve looked forward to everything you’ve written since I discovered your work.
I love reading your posts. They are encouraging. I know people trying to write, including myself, getting stuck because of perfectionism. I find it interesting that you do all of your research before you even start writing. One of the major pieces of advice I’ve gotten when I dwelled on how to tackle a project was to just write. Now that I’ve written there are elements I think could use more research. I can see getting stuck in a loop and never truly being ready to publish. How do you get past that?
Anita is amazing. Your posts are insightful and true. Reading one of your books or posts always cheers me up. Thank you for all your hard work. Looking forward to the next Anita book.
Part of why I love your stories is the perfectionism of your research, which I first questioned in Bloody Bones, but ever since then, I don’t question, I just absorb. I don’t write anymore, my muse changed my art to painting and I don’t paint anymore because the environment I currently live in doesn’t allow my muse free, but I know exactly what you mean, because the next place I move to, which will be in the spring, will have a place for me to let my muse out so I can paint. Just like you said, once you get it right, don’t fuchsia with it!
This is an amazing post, and it’s so interesting to hear how straying from the process you’ve used for so long affected you in this way. Even in my own little drabbles, I know that it’s still the tactile side of pen on paper that brings out my creativity best, even if I’m slowly learning what works for me on the digital side.
It’s almost like signalling to the subconscious that we’re about to let it loose, even if the conscious self sometimes thinks it has it all worked out by itself.
Always fascinating to read about the ups and downs of the process that writers have.
I color when I’m stressed or need to relax, like before bed. The pictures are always shaped and swirls, very abstract. I generally make some mistake early on, almost like my subconscious is removing that urge to be perfect. The same thing happened when I would do cross stitch or paint by numbers. Very liberating in its own way.
Thank You Laurell. I’m going to share this with my daughter. she is an artist and singer and she may help her hone her talent. I can’t wait for Crimson.
It’s not really one of those things that you think about but your post is totally true. Your physical environment has a huge impact on productivity and motivation. As a student I notice when my desk is cluttered I feel super stressed out and I have zero motivation. This post has inspired me to clean up my work space. I know that I need a certain physical setting to get shit done but I guess I just never really thought it was so important. I can’t wait for the book 🙂 Thanks for keeping us fans updated.
This really hit me on a very personal level. So much so that I had this quote made as a sign to hang over my desk. Thank you very much for that!
I understand completely about which devices work for people and ones that just don’t! I recently have been forced onto a surface by my work masters. Hate it! I actually have to write and produce documents, worksheets and job descriptions. Not just input data or research information. I much prefer a real sized keyboard and a large enough screen to see what the hell I’m doing! I also work in an area that the WIFI isn’t consistent, internet, connection to projectors or printers drive me crazy.
I wonder if your I Pad had a keyboard attachment? Hunting and pecking would make work much slower, but then, blind keyboarding is becoming a lost art I guess.
I agree, being able to fully research first is a blessing to writing, but alas, dead lines loom! I agree with completing a work and then editing, it makes the cuts and additions glaringly obvious, even if a passage is loved by the author.
Thank you for this post. If it’s alright with you, I would like to use that last sentence as the sign above my writing area. Those words struck a chord I didn’t know I had.
Great entry, thanks 😀 as a European, I know how hard it must have been when you saw how things can be so so so SO different from the US.
I hope you didn’t kill any major character 🙂
Being an irish reader I am very excited that the next book is set here and am so glad you enjoyed your time here. I love these insights into your writing process and find them very interesting when reading the actual book to try and ‘see’ the issues you have commented on in the writing process.
I had a wonderful night with some friends a couple of weeks ago and after a few too many the group usually resorts to drunkenly debating ‘what if’ statements. It was quite funny and actually rather intriguing debating how Ireland, and we as irish people would cope if the Anita Blake world became a reality. Far fetched, realistic, optimistic and pessimistic predictions, with everything in between were hypothesised. I really am looking forward now to seeing what you make of that ‘what if.’
Thank you for your hard work, a glimpse into your world and for choosing Ireland as a setting for your characters.
Like everyone else I love your books and writing and am extremely appreciative of the obvious research and just raw sanity that fills your worlds.
All that being said, all I really want to know is, how the hell do you write a book on an ipad of all things?!
I found a place on the one family vacation my parents could take us on. Even though it has been twenty years since then the place has stayed in my mind as the most beautiful and peaceful place I have ever seen. I hope to one day take my children there. It’s tenkiller lake in Oklahoma. We had rented a cabin there for two nights on our way to Arizona. The cabin was tucked away in the trees an over looked a beautiful lake. When you described where you like to write it instantly made me think of there.
I have to start by saying that you are by far my favorite author and have been for the last 5 or so years. Thank you so much for the escape that you have given me in each one of your books. I have read and re-read them all. And I mean all of them. My life is full of stress constantly as I am raising a child with behavioral and mental disabilities. Your books let me escape all the worries that bother me all day long. I cannot wait until my child goes to bed at night so that I might lay down and read. You have quite honestly become my personal hero and I pray that you never stop writing books voluntarily. I think I would lose my mind and end up locked in a mental facility. I used to hate reading and no other author has made me enjoy it until I stumbled onto one of your books. Which incidentally I found in the closet of an apartment that I moved into. Someone left it behind and it called to me. Thank you again. I cannot wait to read your next book.
I Just Want To Say Thank You!! You And Anita Have Helped Get Me Through A Lot & Remind Me That Women Are Strong Even When We Forget Lol. I’ve Been Reading Your Books For About Ten Years, & Each Book Makes Me Love Anita, Her Family & Myself Much More.
When I first started reading your books it was like a culture shock for me. Seriously! I had never read about such a bada.. Female heroine befere ever. Then the all the details in the intense scenes. Yeah I was totally hooked. I drive truck for a living and audio books are my saving grace since I’m such a bookworm. Finding your books has been both a blessing and curse. Somestimes I’m yelling encouragement for Anita, and sometimes I’m cursing her out. I’m sure my fellow road patrons that have pass me at these moments thought I was loosing my mind. Seriously I have to make sure I’m in a good frame of mind before I put one of your books playing because of the emotional cycles they take me through. I’ve had to stop in the middle sometimes and put a regular romance on just to recouperate before finishing the book so I don’t skip through to find out how it ends. Also vice versa when I get tired of all the wimpy women in the regular romances I have to come get my Anita fix. Two edged sword I guess. Lol. Anyway thanks for the great journeys that your books take me on. I’ve brought the latest two but its been awhile so now I’m going start from the beginning so I can be in the flow of things. Yes I’ll probably take a break several times, but I always come back. Lol
Came to see if there might be a new Meredith Gentry book and lo’ there it was. Then to read about your writing process felt like a special treat because I had wondered about it off and on over the past 15 odd years of reading your books. A writer’s creative process is interesting to me because every one is different and the amount of research you do is evident – it is one of the reasons why you’re one of my favourite writers. In fact, I had clocked the spelling on your post-it note with utter disbelief and wondered if it would be terribly rude to point it out! LOL. My own muse has been nagging at me for months but the ‘atmosphere’ hasn’t been set up right just yet… But thank you, for continuing with two fantastic series. I love them both and am really looking forward to seeing more of Damien. Now if only Asher can get his issues together…
Thank you also for the words of advice on how to keep your writing flowing forward, by embracing our own writing process that works. I used to read every article I could get my hands on, searching for a “magic bullet” that would make me hit this golden moment of enlightenment. I thought that successful writers had a secret key to being an author. Of course I found the very opposite was true. I found the “magic bullet” was in me; my writing process was as you said, what was comfortable and worked best for me, and being consistent. I like the way you put it better, however (smile).
I hadn’t realized you were doing Damien, or I’d have volunteered my expertise in Viking Age physical culture and literature if you needed it. There’s a fabulous account by the Moorish traveler Al-Ghazal of a Viking queen in Clonmacnoise who sat atop the Christian altar there and gave heathen prophecies… I’ve imagined her in the history of Anita’ s world. I also hope you got to visit Dublin, which was the center of a large and thriving Viking kingdom. I’ve had my copy on preorder for a while, looking forward to it!
I love reading the glimpses you give us into your process. I know of a stand that will work with the LifeProof iPad case that will allow it to charge at the same time…. It allows both vertical and horizontal use and is very sturdy.
I don’t know if it is proper to just post the info here so I will just say please let me know and I will be happy to share.
Please tell me that more of your books are going to be coming out in graphic novel form!!! I’ve just re-read the first 3, I have them all, and I loved them sooooo much! I’d love to continue on this journey in that format.
Absolutely love your books.Looking forward to the Crimson Death .Just keep doing what you do.
I love all your series, but I was wondering if there were going to be any more Merideth Gentry’s? I would really love to know more about the babies!!!!!