Progress rather than perfection

Hmm, that is something I struggle with. I want things to be brilliant right away. I don't enjoy being a beginner at anything.

My husband and I went rock-climbing yesterday. I haven't been for a couple of months, and my muscles were rebelling against me. Even in fairly low-rated climbs I was finding it hard to stay on the wall - my fingers just wouldn't grip and my body didn't have enough oomph to push me up to the holds. I got really frustrated with myself, and even a little tearful. I started kicking the wall when I was hanging in the harness, and snarling at my poor husband, who was belaying for me, when he offered suggestions. Eventually I managed to complete a couple and get some sort of sense of achievement, but I was berating myself the whole way through and really didn't enjoy the time there until it was over (and I spoiled it for LOML, too).

This is stupid. I can't expect to be perfect if I haven't been practising. And all that self-talk ... "You're so stupid, you're no good at this", blah blah blah. I wouldn't talk to anyone else the way I talk to myself inside my own head.

This carries over into my writing as well. I want it to be perfect right away and get hugely impatient and annoyed with myself when it isn't. Really, all it requires is practice and diligence, and gradual progress will be made.

I can also sometimes be resentful of criticism, no matter how constructive, and think "well then, the whole thing is obviously terrible so I should just scrap it". A very extreme reaction which, I think, is self-preservation in disguise: it's easier to flounce off dramatically and abandon a project than it is to work through the blocks, trudge on, do the miles, work with criticism, endure the whole long process of making a piece of work better. I'm learning on this book that progress is what matters, not perfection. Even if I feel like every word I'm writing is rubbish, the most important thing is just to show up at the page and keep going. It's usually better than I think when I look back later. And by doing my little increments of a couple of thousand words a day, I am a third of the way through a 100,000 word novel.

"I don't know why it is that we fail to talk about art in terms of humble diligence. So much of making a career as an artist consists of the small strokes, the willingness to show up and try on a daily basis." - The Sound of Paper, Julia Cameron