Tonight I’m stuck. I have a deadline coming up in the next few days and I am just in the final stage of finishing a working draft. So as the title implies, I’m…under pressure.
Right now I’ve been fighting finishing this draft for a few days. I know if I just sit down and work through it, I’ll nail it, but the big thing that is holding me back is that streak of perfectionism I have. The weird thing is that a year ago, I was writing for a client that requested 20 articles at 2000 words each. I was cranking one or two out per day. The bummer is that I just didn’t care. I knew it was just SEO work that was designed to capture the Google search algorithm.
Topics ranged from Angel Numbers to the Zodiac. Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson. Twenty topics that were just throwing together word salad for a paycheck. Sometimes I would just sit down and burn through them. My edits were very light. As long as the client paid me, I didn’t care. It was easy. I just blocked off a couple hours to get the research and typing done and I would be done. Around 4000 words per day. It was exhausting, but at the end of the day, it just just a thing I did.
Lately I’ve found that there are days I struggle with the articles I write. I’m crafting actual, thoughtful stories. Some for content creation for an anchor client and others for magazines. The wild thing is the more of a professional I’ve become, the harder the work has become. The greater the Resistance. It’s not easy like it used to be writing fluff pieces or blogs about traumatic brain injuries for law firms.
I take pictures. I interview people. I research topics. Right now I have a 750 word article I am struggling to finish before deadline because I want to get the words right. I want to make it perfect. I know nothing is every really perfect, but I want to come as close as I can. I take a lot of pride in the work I do. Even the fluff pieces for websites that never really got around to publishing what I sent them. Even though I worked for a solid month on the content they paid me for.
I wish I knew why it isn’t getting easier, but harder to do this. And when I’m done–when the story is sent off to the editor–man, what a rush! I’ve had a couple months to write this, and it’s not like I’m doing it last minute. I’ve been researching, taking notes, piecing things together since the beginning of July on this one. There’s a…feeling I chase when I know it’s coming together just right. As though the story is telling me how it needs to Become.
It always comes together. Aside from the social media distractions or trips out of town, or taking a day off. The weird thing is usually it’s some element I was missing that falls into place, and maybe with this story, that piece of the puzzle still hasn’t revealed itself. That spark of life that takes it from just writing a story, to giving it a soul.
I don’t know. Maybe that’s for a few more passes down the line. Maybe it already has a soul. Maybe it doesn’t matter and I’m just getting in my own way. Here’s the thing. I want it to do justice to the subject matter, and it is a story outside of my comfort zone. Maybe it’s scaring me a little.
Hard to say. It seems like such a paradox. You would think with more practice, things would get easier, but maybe it’s because I’m leveling up. The writing I’m doing is better. It’s more than just sticking words together. It’s creating something beautiful, and that times consideration. It takes expertise. Finesse.
That’s the story I’m telling myself anyway.
One theory, which I think has some truth to it, is that when you level up, your standards also rise. I guess one way to examine that is to look at something you did when you were at a lower skill level, say 10 or 20 years ago. If you thought it was ‘good enough’ back then, do you still think the same by your current standards?
Totally agree with that theory!