Hi my name is Elle and I am a perfectionist. Being a perfectionist can be both a good thing and a bad thing, however, being a writer it tends to lean more to the bad side. I am both my best friend and my worst enemy. There is no one in the world that is as hard on me as I am on myself. While I continually give others second chances, I cannot give myself that same treatment. This is where the learning part kicks in.

As you may already know I am working on my first novel. What you may not know is writing a novel takes a lot more than making up a story in your head and putting it down on paper ( or typing it in Microsoft word.) It actually takes a lot of work and it can be a very, VERY lengthy and tedious process. Especially if you’re writing a fiction novel like I am, that’s why the people that do it-really love it. With that being said, I expected to be able to put my story in writing and once it was done have a quick edit by the editor and then off to print it goes! Boy was I sadly mistaken.

After having it edited, I got my copy back and burst into tears (no seriously I did) the amount of corrections that were listed was very discouraging to say the least. Especially when you are a perfectionist like I am- getting my biggest accomplishment back with revision suggestions and corrections was like having a house come down on my head. Low and behold though, after putting on my big girl pants ( it only took me 2 days to get over ) and going through the suggestions I realised that there were indeed corrections to be made. Four eyes are definitely better than two.

As writers when it comes to our own work we tend to look over the mistakes and inconsistencies simply because we KNOW how we want our work to be read. What we don’t realise is that when look over our work we also look over any mistakes that we may make, yes even the perfectionists like myself.

So now I am in the process of heading back to the drawing board to fix my story, which I firmly believe now will make my story that I once thought was great…brilliant!

I do however have some tips that I’ve picked up along the way that have helped me to keep things in check:

1. Create a storyboard – write out a brief storyline of how you want your story to go. This will make sure that you keep your story on track. Include significant events, dates and characters involved.

2. Keep a journal – write out all the main characters and the details that you’ve used. Include their ages, descriptions etc (trust me I had my characters age change and I didn’t even realise.) Make sure you keep this handy while writing so you can always go back to it.

3. When writing do not and I mean DO NOT go back and edit. Make sure you keep writing until you are done for the day. Then the next day go back with fresh eyes and revise it. When you stop to edit while writing you lose your train of thought, and usually that train never comes back.

Not to worry as I pick up more tips I’ll be sure to post them!

So the lessons that I learned this week are as follows: A) it’s ok to make mistakes, and it is definitely ok to take constructive criticism. B) Being a perfectionist doesn’t work when it comes to writing.

Until next time,

xoxo

Elle

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