Challenging the Stories We Tell About Ourselves (A Guest Post)
Shaundra Taylor works behind the scenes at Backstory Preaching as editor in chief. She writes a weekly “Monday Reflection” in BsP’s free community on Mighty Networks exploring creative work, spirituality, and writing craft. On the weekends, she and her husband shuttle their teens to soccer games and ski slopes from their Victorian fixer-upper just north of Boston.
My achilles heel as a writer is expecting perfection as I go.
Anyone else relate?
This is probably why I've been a procrastinator through my life.
In college, I'd set my alarm for 4 a.m. and write my heart out for several hours before submitting an essay to my literature professor late in the morning.
I found that if I started earlier, my writing would take twice as long. I’d fill however many hours I allotted myself with tweaking and tinkering and second-guessing for little noticeable improvement.
To be clear, I completed other preparatory work in the days before, a thorough analysis, synthesis, and outline finished long before that alarm ever buzzed.
But the writing itself came in one, condensed burst. I crafted each sentence with care, rewriting and word-smithing as I went, so that by the time I finished writing, a quick proofread was all the paper needed before I hit print and headed to class.
I'm the kind of writer who gets it right on the first draft.
That's the story I've told myself for decades.
Challenging the Narrative
Because of this self-inflicted identity, the following paragraphs challenged me when they arrived in my inbox this summer—the way uncomfortable but necessary truths do:
Sometimes, especially in a first draft, I get paralyzed by a fear of doing it wrong, of taking an approach that I'll eventually have to undo...It's difficult for me to make peace in advance with the inevitable detours, backtracks, wrong turns, dead ends, flat tires. Other times I forge ahead while a big red light flashes that what I'm doing isn't working. I'm ever hopeful that the flashing light is wrong, that, down the road, my first readers will reassuringly contradict the warning. This has never happened.
My gut instinct that something isn't working has always been correct, but--maybe paradoxically--my instinct to push through anyway has also been correct. I needed to put down the wrong thing in order to be able to let it go. The inherent inefficiency...makes me anxious, but I think being anxious is a necessary, if unpleasant, part of my process. Writing is really hard, and making peace with it being hard is hard, too. Sometimes you're gonna do it right, and sometimes you're gonna do it wrong. The stuff you get right on the first try won't necessarily be better than the stuff you have to grind away at forever. Probably none of it will ever be perfect because nothing is. So cut yourself some slack. Accept the mess. —Maggie Shipstead's contribution to Jami Attenberg's newsletter on Day 8 of the 2021 #1000wordsofsummer challenge (emphasis mine)
Earlier this summer, I realized that the desire to get it "perfect" hasn't served my current project—a novel—well.
My narrative of being the kind of writer who gets it right the first time had stymied all progress because the sheer scope of 75,000+ words prohibits perfection on the first go.
My fear of letting it be messy kept me spinning in a loop of perpetual refinement without generating new material .
For well over a year, I'd been stuck about two-thirds of the way through my first draft, revising and rewriting and tweaking and tinkering and adding and deleting scenes—but making zero forward progress.
A couple months ago, a friend asked me to rethink my assumptions.
Could I let the draft exist imperfectly and finish anyway? Could I let go of the problems I knew were there to get the rest of the words on the page, and then go back to "perfect" it in full?
Taking Action Toward a New Story
Desperate to feel some sort of forward momentum, I committed to the #1000wordsofsummer challenge as a way to finish the draft and push myself out of perfectionism: 1000 words a day from May 31st to June 14th.
Surely I could do anything for two weeks.
But to commit to 1000 words a day meant letting go of word-smithing and sitting with a sentence for several minutes at a time to make it sing.
I had to make peace with the possibility of getting it wrong or potentially sounding cliché. Because writing something exquisitely the first time through does not lend itself to that kind of volume.
The result? I wrote 14,000 words in 14 days.
I wrote the end of the novel, which I've known in my bones from the start, and discovered I was actually much closer to finishing the book than I'd realized.
In fact, thinking otherwise was creating many of my problems.
I have a few scenes to fill in, but now I’m within approximately 5000 words of a full draft. A mess for sure, but a full draft.
Then I can go back and make it shine.
Then it will be appropriate to tinker and tweak and add and delete and rearrange.
The Power of Breaking Our Own Assumptions
Besides the obvious satisfaction of nearly finishing this draft (finally!), I experienced even bigger wins as a writer from the challenge.
During that two weeks, I broke every assumption I'd made about myself as a writer in order to hit my word count. Turns out:
I can write a few hundred words at a time in stolen minutes between dinner and my daughter’s soccer practice rather than needing a big, uninterrupted block of time.
I can write during dinner prep, after my teens have gone to bed, or on a Sunday afternoon while cooling down from a workout—not just on a weekday morning when my schedule allows.
I can get the sentences down without worrying about whether the imagery is just right or the word choice is as strong as it can be.
I can keep moving forward, even if I'm not 100% sure I'm heading the right direction.
I can make space for this in the midst my full life.
I've given myself permission to write the “[terrible] first draft” Anne Lamott so affectionately encourages us to write, allowed myself the freedom to "put down the wrong thing in order to let go."
As a result, I'm making significant progress and freeing myself from narratives that have handcuffed me for decades.
It still feels like work, hard work, but I'm proud. There's joy. There's hope for a finish line.
Not bad for a two-week challenge, eh?
What about you?
I share all this to ask:
What beliefs are holding you back in your preaching?
What stories are you telling yourself about what is or isn't possible for you?
Where do you need to give yourself permission to make imperfect progress?
There is freedom to be found on the other side of our assumptions.
Sometimes, the beliefs we hold about ourselves hold us back, keep us stuck, prevent us from achieving the work set before us by God.
This week, I encourage you to embrace the mess for the sake of progress. Step in the direction of a story that would be more helpful to you and your deepest desires.
Is there a new, truer narrative you can write?
Collective/+ Enrollment is Open Through Wednesday, 9/29.
And then closes until 2022!
The online community involved in the #1000words of summer challenge created the structure, encouragement, and accountability I needed to keep pushing forward.
The Collectives were created for this very same purpose.
Practical tools and resources
A structured rhythm with opportunities for live interaction and workshopping
And a community that gets it
How might your preaching life change with some structure and support?