We all want to be somehow perfect.
It doesn’t matter that we know it’s not possible. In this article, we have four crazy arms of perfection brought to life by writer Keith Rhys.
I wish I could have said it better, but Keith (alumni of the Article Writing Course) says it eloquently. You’ll relate to these arms of perfection, no matter who you are or what you do.
Let's get started.
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Note: (This is an unedited transcript)
Do you know the feeling that you get when you see something that you wish you had done?
That's exactly the feeling I had when conducting one of the Article Writing Courses. In the course, I stress on the fact that you are not writing articles, you are learning how to write.
And yet, if you have enough of that energy within you, you usually have the structure, you know how to write, which is exactly what happened at that moment in time.
During the Article Writing Course, the task for that week was to do several outlines. But instead of outlining, this particular person decided to write an article.
The person we're talking about is called Keith Rhys. Keith is talking about a deep mental shift, moving from resistance. And this is what this piece is about.
On the face of it, it is about outlining. It is about this deep frustration with outlining, but it is mostly resistance. It is how perfection gets its sneaky little claws in you and won't let go.
So on the surface, Keith is sharing his struggle with outlining, but underneath, he is describing a process of dismantling internal myths, myths that keep writers stuck. The need for perfection, the need for structure, and the illusion that creativity and planning are enemies.
So, let's listen to Keith, but before that, he refers to me as if I, Sean, were writing since I was a baby and I was just really badly.
But enough blah blah, let's hear it from Keith.
Well, it's still me, but I'm reading for Keith.
I have resisted outlining, like the plague. I've tried kind of to implement outlining, and it didn't take. I told myself that Sean has a more structured brain. Sean is a natural, an outlining savant.
I told myself, my brain simply wasn't wired to outline. My spouse agreed. But in the very next breath, my spouse insists that there is no excuse.
Damn.
And I know that I've always wanted to learn how to outline. I know it's important. So this week, I vowed that I would let go of every excuse that I've had and used over the decades.
I want to become open to the possibilities, even if I don't understand or even if I suck at it. I had to erase my past struggles and take a huge leap of faith that simply outlining for its own sake, the way Sean is teaching, will help me write better, both because it's logical and because I trust Sean.
Faced with the whiteboard, I asked myself, why is outlining so scary?
I discovered four tyrannical assumptions that I've been living with.
First, the tyranny of the big picture.
Somehow, I must know in advance everything I ever want to write about a topic.
And this is before I outline any subtopics. I have to know it all. Right at the start, before I get to the outline, before I write anything, I have to know how it's going to unfold. I have to know the big picture, the tyranny of the big picture. That's my first problem. It's gone.
The second one, the tyranny of one right way.
I must have all the correct components about the topic included in the outline. I can't bring myself to write until all the components are correct.
Well, maybe there is no right, and maybe there is simply what is applicable or interesting in that moment. And that's okay.
And what do you know?
I can always write another article with anything that I've forgotten, but you know how it is? I feel like there should be one right way, the tyranny of one right way. But hey, I could always write another article. I forgot that. Imagine that. So, that's two points down. Two excuses gone.
The third, The Tyranny of the Silly Structure Terror.
I've told myself for years that I've had to create an outline as I wrote it, that the rest of the piece shows me what I'm missing as I write. Well, it does sometimes, but it takes me eight freaking times longer than just starting with an outline.
I've always feared that structure would strip me of my creativity. It wouldn't mute my natural voice, and I had other assorted such nonsense in my head. Nonsense indeed. It's the reverse. Structure doesn't take me to a worse place. It makes me better, faster.
And finally, I have the fourth one, which is the Tyranny of No Changes Allowed.
Hey, what do you know? I can still make changes anytime I want, and it's easier to make changes to an outline than it is to spend eight hours crafting a piece and ending up completely lost.
An outline isn't written in stone.
It is dynamic and flexible, just as I'm becoming. And with that final word, Keith ends his article. This is what he wrote on week two. He had all of that pent up energy. He had a bit of structure, and he outlined it, and then wrote it very quickly.
And there are four big takeaways here.
I usually say, just keep it to three, but there are four here.
—The first is the tyranny of the big picture, that you must know everything in advance, and you don't.
—The second is that there is one right way. There isn't, but you already knew that. The third is the silly structure terror, that structure will hold you back, it'll keep you somehow in that cage, and you won't be able to get out. Structure allows you to be more creative, but you wouldn't know that unless you followed structure. It's like a recipe, it's structure, but hey, you can change it, can't you?
—And finally, no change is allowed, which is similar to structure, but it's slightly different.
—You can always make changes, and these four principles apply to life. But there is one of them that stands head and shoulders above, and that is the tyranny of the big picture, that you must know in advance everything.
Somehow, that outline of your life, of your work, of your projects, somehow you have to know that in advance.
And this scares the heck out of most people, that they aren't sure what the future will bring. They say, if we knew that we could follow this pathway, we would, we would work really hard. Not entirely true, but they say that.
And we can't know that.
We can't know in advance everything that we want to write or do or how life is going to unfold, because that's what it is. It's just dynamic. And it applies to article writing, but it applies to gardening or baking or pretty much anything else.
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