A Little Tip for the Perfectionist Trying to Kill My Book

I walk this line between incoherent creative overflow and paralyzing perfectionism. More accurately, I seem to hop back and forth over line. I don't actually get much contact with it. I believe that would be called balance. Yeah. Don't have much of that right now.

As a writer of both non-fiction and fiction, I find that I use different skills for different projects. I fight myself into structure and plotting in my fiction, jump into the story and watch it blow up around me as I run pell-mell through things and throw out my plans as some new angle appears. It's a wild ride when I abandon all editing techniques because if I stop to even fix stuff like spelling, I get stuck. My feet sink into that other side of the line. Perfectionism. Even a sentence can turn into an hour long project. I can't risk getting there or I will NEVER FINISH my first drafts.

Usually with non-fiction, this isn't such a struggle. I make an outline and then write it out. Until this time.

I'm being sucked down this drain in to the darkness of anxiety and perfectionism. What if I write the wrong thing?

I know I need to write! I've felt inspiration, the pulling tug of God telling me this is something He would like me to do. It will make a difference to someone.

But instead of writing I binge watch Chinese romantic dramas.

Last week I told myself I had to get on top of this. Instead of writing, I grabbed my scriptures, searching for inspiration.

The book fell open to Jeremiah 18:2-6.

"Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words. 
Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. 
And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again, another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it. 
Then the word of the Lord came unto me saying, 
O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel."

Okay. It was almost funny in a way.

Regardless of what this was originally intended to mean, for me, that night, it was suddenly clear that the Lord was telling me to stop being afraid of doing the wrong thing and to just write! I needed to get something down and then, like the potter, couldn't I fix my mistakes later? Wasn't I in the Lord's hands? Couldn't he show me how to fix things too? But not if I didn't put something down first. I had to write.

That's my goal now. I tell myself: "Put something down. We can fix it later." And honestly, if God is going to be one of my editors, things will work out just fine.