(even assuming you agree with that approach) most of us can’t compartmentalize so effectively. We need to follow Flaubert’s famous dictum to “Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
In On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft , Stephen King writes: “When I’m asked for ‘the secret of my success’… I sometimes say there are two: I stayed physically healthy … and I stayed married … The combination of a healthy body and a stable relationship with a self-reliant woman who takes zero shit from me or anyone else has made the continuity of my working life possible.”
Take prompt steps to resolve, or at least ameliorate, health, personal, and relationship problems as well as emotional problems such as depression and anxiety. Remember that procrastination can attack healing endeavors every bit as eagerly as it does your writing, and in particular is likely to strike at the beginning of the project. So, do what you can to get over the initial hump, and see a doctor, therapist, or other professional.
2) Create a Supportive Community. I write extensively about community throughout this book, and devote Chapters 6, 7, and 8 largely to it. Community’s importance cannot be overstated—in fact, it could well be the determining factor in your success.
Community doesn’t just provide colleagues and mentors; it provides a powerful expectation. It’s hard, if not impossible, to succeed if people around you are telling you you can’t. Or if they’re expecting you to sacrifice your goals in favor of theirs. Or if they are threatened by your success. Or if they are ignorant about the mechanisms of success and vocally obstinate in their ignorance.
Writing is such a challenging vocation, in fact, that the absence of hostility isn’t enough: you need active support. Prolific people are assiduous in seeking out supporters and equally assiduous in minimizing contact with those who might undermine them, even if the “underminers” happen to be related. This may not be easy, but the prolific, in common with most successful people, tend to clearly understand the implications of their choices—in this case, the prospect of a life of bitter under-accomplishment—and it’s that clarity that gives them the courage to act.
3) Get an Instructive Hobby. Many writers have hobbies or other creative outlets in which they are much more productive than their writing, or even wholly unblocked. Every writer should have one, and should practice working out her productivity and perfectionism issues in that realm as well. A student once told of a quilting teacher she had who chirpily told a class, “If no one’s bleeding, we’re doing great!” That’s a great antiperfectionist lesson.
My hobby is hiking, and every time I do it I viscerally re-experience the truth that progress is made one step at a time. Also, I learn important lessons in overcoming fear and asking for help.
4) For Radical Productivity, Follow the Advice in the Book—Radically. After you can reliably write nonperfectionistically, you free yourself to write easily (without major barriers), and then almost effortlessly (without any barriers to speak of). At this point, writing becomes enthralling and even joyful. Even the “difficult” (in the intellectual or emotional sense) parts of the work become much easier. In fact, you’ll come to see that “easy” and “difficult” are largely arbitrary labels, and that there’s much less difference between the supposedly easy and difficult parts of your projects than you now think.
The state of creativity without barriers is what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihályi famously called “flow.” In flow, you’re deeply engrossed in your work and time flies.
Perfectionists fight their creativity every step of the way, while paradoxically waiting and hoping and praying for flow to arrive. Compassionately objective writers, in contrast,
In On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft , Stephen King writes: “When I’m asked for ‘the secret of my success’… I sometimes say there are two: I stayed physically healthy … and I stayed married … The combination of a healthy body and a stable relationship with a self-reliant woman who takes zero shit from me or anyone else has made the continuity of my working life possible.”
Take prompt steps to resolve, or at least ameliorate, health, personal, and relationship problems as well as emotional problems such as depression and anxiety. Remember that procrastination can attack healing endeavors every bit as eagerly as it does your writing, and in particular is likely to strike at the beginning of the project. So, do what you can to get over the initial hump, and see a doctor, therapist, or other professional.
2) Create a Supportive Community. I write extensively about community throughout this book, and devote Chapters 6, 7, and 8 largely to it. Community’s importance cannot be overstated—in fact, it could well be the determining factor in your success.
Community doesn’t just provide colleagues and mentors; it provides a powerful expectation. It’s hard, if not impossible, to succeed if people around you are telling you you can’t. Or if they’re expecting you to sacrifice your goals in favor of theirs. Or if they are threatened by your success. Or if they are ignorant about the mechanisms of success and vocally obstinate in their ignorance.
Writing is such a challenging vocation, in fact, that the absence of hostility isn’t enough: you need active support. Prolific people are assiduous in seeking out supporters and equally assiduous in minimizing contact with those who might undermine them, even if the “underminers” happen to be related. This may not be easy, but the prolific, in common with most successful people, tend to clearly understand the implications of their choices—in this case, the prospect of a life of bitter under-accomplishment—and it’s that clarity that gives them the courage to act.
3) Get an Instructive Hobby. Many writers have hobbies or other creative outlets in which they are much more productive than their writing, or even wholly unblocked. Every writer should have one, and should practice working out her productivity and perfectionism issues in that realm as well. A student once told of a quilting teacher she had who chirpily told a class, “If no one’s bleeding, we’re doing great!” That’s a great antiperfectionist lesson.
My hobby is hiking, and every time I do it I viscerally re-experience the truth that progress is made one step at a time. Also, I learn important lessons in overcoming fear and asking for help.
4) For Radical Productivity, Follow the Advice in the Book—Radically. After you can reliably write nonperfectionistically, you free yourself to write easily (without major barriers), and then almost effortlessly (without any barriers to speak of). At this point, writing becomes enthralling and even joyful. Even the “difficult” (in the intellectual or emotional sense) parts of the work become much easier. In fact, you’ll come to see that “easy” and “difficult” are largely arbitrary labels, and that there’s much less difference between the supposedly easy and difficult parts of your projects than you now think.
The state of creativity without barriers is what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihályi famously called “flow.” In flow, you’re deeply engrossed in your work and time flies.
Perfectionists fight their creativity every step of the way, while paradoxically waiting and hoping and praying for flow to arrive. Compassionately objective writers, in contrast,
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