I am a perfectionist. At the beginning of Sophomore year, whenever I had to write something for English class, I found myself sitting at my laptop, staring at the ceiling, desperately trying to think of the perfect idea before I even started writing. I assumed that this was the right approach until I realized that none of those projects were turning out too well. So while I've learned plenty of new, important things in English; about grammar, sentence structure, Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, etc...the most important thing that I've personally learned is that, no matter how hard I try, I can't think like a perfectionist when I'm writing. I can't obsess over each and every line as I write it, because I'll end up getting nothing done. I know that to write my best work, I need to relax, and let my ideas flow freely. Eventually, I'll be able to go back and fix everything and make it better. But I can't expect my rough draft of anything to be perfect.
It was difficult for me to grasp this concept, especially while working on blogs. Just like this one. Whenever a blog was assigned, I would panic. With such a huge number of things that I could potentially write about for each prompt, I would spend an hour sitting, banging my head on my desk, just trying to think of "the right topic". Little did I know that "the right topic" would appear as soon as I started writing. All I needed to do was let my mind explore different topics and experiment freely with different words and phrases. After that, the blog came much more naturally. Throughout this first semester, I've gotten significantly better at releasing all of my ideas and refining them later, without worrying about how bad it sounds. Blogs have become a method of expressing my ideas instead of a reason to freak out.
Another instance where it was clear that my perfectionism was counterproductive was when we started writing our poems. As opposed to using the poem to deeply express a moment in my life, I stuck to the surface. The first draft of my poem was extremely safe, as a means of making sure I didn't sound stupid. But this is exactly the opposite of what a poem should accomplish. A poem should delve into your mind and explore lingering instances in your life. But I felt like I couldn't let myself sound foolish or dumb. Eventually, I saw how detrimental this frame of mind was. Once I realized that I just needed to relax and write, my poem flourished, and I am proud of my most recent draft (because, of course, a poem is never really finished). Not worrying about being perfect allowed me to make mistakes and take risks, which paved the way for a much better poem.
But working on this poem also pointed out what I need to work on in order to improve my learning: Letting go. When I think that something I write sounds good, it's hard for me to let go of it. But I can't hold onto everything I write in the first few drafts, no matter how attached I am to it. For my later work to get better, I have to let go of some of what I originally wrote. Although it may seem essential for my piece of work at the time, being open to letting go of earlier parts of the piece allows for even better revisions to take their place later. That concept is still difficult for me to apply to my writing, but I will definitely work on it during the second semester. Hopefully it will allow me to become a better writer, and it'll help me in other classes and fields of learning as well.
