Against Perfectionism and Productivity: On Embracing Flaws as a Writer

Certain stories are told to us, and there are others we tell ourselves. But when a narrative becomes our identity, it can be challenging to discern the difference between who we are and what we’ve grown used to hearing.

For years, I’d been told (and eventually internalized) that speed and ruthless productivity would result in a “successful” life. In some ways this ended up being true. Growing up, there was no question that I wanted to become a writer, but instead, the Tumblr blog I’d started to include in college portfolios evolved into a boutique content business that I went on to run for over five years.

I had always been good at working hard and fast, and I knew that the praise I received was directly linked to my output. If I just kept moving, that had to mean that I was moving in the right direction… (Right?) For too long, my tendency was to get ahead of the problem before recognizing the real problem was my pace. I was outpacing my mistakes instead of learning from them.

It started innocently enough: In 2019, I was at the beginning of the end of this tumultuous chapter of my professional life. Rather than answering client emails, I found myself attempting flash fiction and essays during working hours, leafing through a literary journal instead of a fashion magazine, spending the night with a spellbinding novel rather than attending an industry event.

It had been years since I had allowed myself to focus on stories that didn’t connect to a call-to-action or product description. I didn’t care that I wasn’t being paid to write or think in this way—or that no one knew about my return to the page. An internal switch had gone off, and I felt calmer.

More publicly, I’d also recently soft-launched a podcast (now podcast/newsletter) called Slow Stories to speak with other creative professionals about slowing down in our digital age. (I mostly wanted to know if they felt as exhausted by it as I did.)

Eventually, Slow Stories took on a broader exploration of time and pace overall—and laid the groundwork for my first book, Slowing, a collection of essays, interviews, and prompts about time, creativity, and pace.

*

In recent years, I’ve thought a lot about narrative and structure as it pertains to writing and the writing life. (As Elisa Gabbert poignantly writes in her essay “Infinite Abundance on a Narrow Ledge” in Any Person is the Only Self, “I obviously didn’t become an architect, but I do think of writing as spatial. I think essays, like buildings, need structure and mood.”)

Part of that work is reflecting on the structures that have been instilled in me: What should a day, a schedule, a life—or, in this case, a story—look like? What gives it a solid foundation? How do you know it’s moving in the right direction? Where does it begin and end? What is a beginning, a middle, and an end?

The latter was a central question I considered when organizing the stories in Slowing. (Every story, conversation—life—has them, after all.) Writing to this framework, I considered, questioned, and interviewed others about how we defined these benchmarks. I shared ordinary life stories that laddered back to these three chapters as I knew them then.

If I’m being honest, there’s more I could say about them since finishing the book. But that’s the beautiful thing about time—with enough distance, an ending suddenly reintroduces itself as a new beginning.

So, here is what I’ll say for now: I’ve always loved beginnings and endings: the first (especially last!) day of school, the early days of a crush, the last glimpse out of a plane window before landing, a compelling opening line in a novel, a film scene that swells towards a climactic resolution before the end-credits roll.

In reading and writing, beginnings and endings have always felt like tent pole moments. They are periods I can envision clearly, bookends that could draw people in and ultimately bring them home.

But over the years, I’ve come to appreciate the middle and all of its vast unknowns. The heart is in the middle of the body—and the story. It’s the period many of us have been conditioned to fear or dread. It’s where the mistakes or missteps become something from which you can extract meaning.

Yet, throughout the process, I still had to combat the idea that I was somehow late to this moment. It was my first book…but was it a beginning, or had the story been writing itself all along?

By the time I had arrived at Slowing, I’d had thirty years of experience. While building a business, tearing it down, falling in love, feeling the positive effects of a fully developed frontal lobe, creating content and finding contentment, I learned how to tell stories. And in the process of slowing it all down, reconsidering societal timelines, and reimaging my creative life, I truly learned how to write.

Language has its own rhythm and cadences, and as someone who came of age in a performative landscape, it felt liberating to cast perfection aside in service of authenticity. As I wrote Slowing, I began to recognize when not to punctuate myself.

Sometimes, I needed to say it with an exclamation point instead of a period! To whisper a lowercase confession. To rant or remember in a run-on sentence. Filters and trends had no place here; instead of solely paying attention to how something looked, I let feeling take the lead. But those feelings, inevitably, would also give way to doubts.

Perhaps it’s worth noting that a few weeks after I turned in Slowing’s manuscript, I stumbled upon a poignant newsletter from Wolfish author Erica Berry, who also referenced fellow writer Emma Eisenberg. Both of their words were what I needed in that liminal space:

I once heard [Eisenberg] say that publishing a nonfiction book meant learning to accept you would be misunderstood. That was part of putting your heart onto the page and into the world: Your intention would not be clear to all readers. It was hard to accept this during the writing process. One day, when I felt particularly immobilized by the prospect of being evaluated by people I did not know, I made an index card and taped it above my desk. YOU WILL BE MISUNDERSTOOD! My brain filled in the rest: And that’s OK.

I wrote Slowing with a nod to slow living and with my heart in slow storytelling. Because, to me, stories are the ultimate form of slowing down. I’m the most present when I’m engaged with a story—whether I’m telling, reading, writing, reimagining, or admiring it. I recognize my humanity: my mistakes and subsequent growth.

In this way, writing has been one of the slowest stories of my life thus far: a winding path to the page rife with run-ons and digressions. I remain far from perfect, yet my missteps have taught me how to change direction with gratitude. My typos have told me a different story—perhaps a truer one.

I keep thinking of a moment in the process of writing Slowing, breaking the cardinal rule of “efficient” writing by editing as I went, where I discovered I’d written scared instead of sacred. This detail might seem inconsequential in the grand scheme of things—especially since I was also navigating a mental health crisis, a budding marriage, and general responsibilities—yet this is one of the things that remain with me today.

Because I was scared. I still am. I’m scared of a lot of things, from the existential threats to the daily anxieties that threaten to unravel my days. I’m scared of making mistakes and not learning from them. I’m scared I’ve forgotten how to fill up my life outside of this project. I’m scared every time a piece of my writing is published, knowing that I’ve improved or changed since the last draft. I’m scared, as Berry and Eisenberg posit, of being misunderstood.

But I’m learning (read: accepting) that the nature of writing is rooted in letting go. And like slowing down, this practice doesn’t always have a clear distinction between beginning and ending: It is a life-long endeavor—a story outside of time—and it is worth it.

______________________________

Slowing by Rachel Schwartzmann is available via Chronicle Books.