Too Much Training
A while back I posted about Overachievement, the primary concepts being Trusting vs. Training mindset. As you might remember, Trusting is the “Just Do it!” mode, avoiding analysis paralysis, trusting yourself, and just getting things done. Training mindset is your self-improvement, self-evaluation (editing) mode.
Even being aware of the problem, I still find myself stuck in a Training mindset a lot of the time. I’m always trying to improve my stories, characters, and ideas. The problem with this is it’s hard to nail down a ‘done’ state. I’m sure some of you can empathize with that.
Keep in mind, this isn’t solved by the “Just Write!” mantra. I’m even less happy sometimes when I go about it with that attitude, because my perfectionist urges kick in even stronger when I have a sneaking suspicion something is crap — I’m not content with a rush job. And doing work quickly often means I’ll just be throwing more of it away.
It’s the age old battle between quality and quantity. The faster and more I write, the lower the quality is. The slower I write, the better the quality but then I never get done. Are we trapped in a paradox with this situation? Where is the balance?
How do you balance Trusting vs. Training, quality vs. quantity, etc.?
Trackbacks/Pings
Leave a reply
Comments
March 31st, 2007 at 1:59 am
I look at my writing in both views. When I write the first draft/initial story I let go of my perfectionist traits. It’s not always easy because many times things change as I write and I want to go back and fix. I’ve kind of trained myself not to do that though. I get into a groove and I let go.
Then the second draft I let all the training and my perfectionist traitskick in (that’s not to say I ignore rules and training when I write the first draft…I just try not to obcess over them. If I tell instead of show a passage, so be it…if it takes more more than five minutes to figure out how to rewrite it then I move on.
For me it’s a matter of momentum. If I’ve got it, I can forgo my training let the words come out as they may…I actually find this easier for me, because I don’t have to worry about it being perfect the first time, the story seems to come out better (the writing just needs a little work in the end :))
March 31st, 2007 at 6:57 pm
You bring up an interesting dilemma, perhaps only solved by the passage of time and self-knowledge and self-acceptance about how one best works. Here’s my story about why I believe this:
I’ve taken many art classes in my life in the quest to be an “artist.” I thought the more classes I took, the better artist I would be. In one way, I was right: the more classes I took, the better artist I became in skills and technique.
But being an artist is as much about intuition and risk-taking as it is about being able to use the tools. At some point, my art became too technical. It had lost that mysterious quality that makes art touching, inspiring, memorable, great. I felt inept. I stopped creating. I couldn’t do art “right” so I didn’t do it at all.
How did this happen? A very wise art teacher summed it up for me: Sometimes art schools DESTROY artists. That’s why he did not make strict technical demands from his students; instead, he tried to nurture their freshness, originality and unique creativity. Some got it and followed their unique path, some didn’t.
“And sadly,” he said, “this is why many art students spend the same amount of time UN-Schooling themselves, restoring what they lost, as they have in art schools which restricted the artists they were.”
Creating art is full of making mistakes, he taught. I finally learned his point long after my art-school years. The key is to keep going, bumps and all.