Are you afraid to let your creative work meet the harsh light of day? Do you find yourself endlessly tinkering with it, rearranging sentences, futzing with word choice, agonizing over whether the piece is really done. If so, you may be suffering from perfectionism. Believe me, it takes one to know one. I, too, am a perfectionist.
But I think I may have found an antidote.
My friend, the artist Robb McDonough, organized a zine fest, which took place this weekend. Zines had their heyday in the 1990s and early 2000s but seem to be making a comeback. I'd never made one because, for one thing, I didn't know what I would make a zine about. (Hello perfectionism!)
It took me a while to land on a subject, but a week before the event I had one: I had discovered a 1938 yearbook from Dominican College (now Dominican University) in San Rafael, California. In 1938 it was still a women's college, and in the yearbook, each graduate had a tipped-in photograph and a short write-up that captured their attributes. The world was on the brink of World War II and yet here they were, beautiful in their youth and bright-eyed with hope for their futures.
I wondered what had happened to them, so I researched and found many of their obituaries. What struck me was that neither the graduate write-ups nor the obituaries captured who these people were. I realized that words, my favorite medium, are woefully inadequate in capturing a whole person and that one day I, too, will be a list of facts: when I was born, when I died, and a few, public high points. So that was what my zine was about.
And because time was short, I made it and didn't even proof it that well (!), printed it, collated it, stapled it, and gave it away. I didn't even save a copy for myself.
Someone else at the zine fest said of his zines: "They're not mine anymore." Isn't that true of all art? You make a thing but the enjoyment of the thing and even misinterpretation of or anger at the thing belongs entirely to someone else.
It feels good to make something and set it free. Try it! Your perfectionism will recede dramatically, I promise.
Need further encouragement? There's a Facebook group dedicated to the pursuit of getting as many rejections as possible. Why? The more you send out, the more you get used to the sting of rejection. The more you send out, the better chance you have at publication.
I am barely on Facebook myself, so I totally understand if that is not your thing. If you have a writing group or partner, you can set up a friendly contest: First person to 100 rejections gets a gift certificate to a local restaurant, a bottle of champagne, or some other tantalizing prize. If you don't have a writing group or partner, you can still set this goal for yourself. Make rejection fun!