Medium | Writing | Self-Improvement
I Don’t Like Everything I Write and That’s Okay — How Accepting Imperfection Has Helped Me Grow
Realizing That Everyone Has Off Days
We as writers hold ourselves to such high standards.
I realized recently that with everything going on in my life as a student, writing is supposed to help me escape. However, in the last week, writing almost felt like a chore. This made me reconsider why I write.
The standards I hold for my writing are partially to blame for this issue. While I think anyone can appreciate a well-crafted piece, the problem arises when the author struggles and hurts their creativity through self-criticism and perfectionism.
I decided to write this article because I’ve found it important to be authentic and reflective of my experiences as a writer.
Writing is about sharing experiences, perspectives, and general ideas with the world. Notice how I didn’t say anything about the quality of my writing. While writing quality is beneficial for a piece, whether or not your writing is of high craftsmanship is beside the point. I’ve found myself reflecting on this idea a lot in my last articles — You write for yourself.
No criticism — but Medium as a platform occasionally promotes and encourages perfectionistic tendencies. Whether Medium, YouTube or even the soon-to-be-banned TikTok, perfectionism and self-criticality are huge issues on any social media platform.
Sometimes I put hours into editing an article while other times I post articles that are more raw and in the moment. Either way, being accepting of the fact that I’m going to have good and bad days as a writer is something that will always translate into authentic writing.
Remember that everyone struggles to write or struggles with holding themselves to high standards and that not being perfect is completely acceptable and should be more normalized on a platform like Medium. Keep writing! Even when it’s not “perfect.”
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