I have been reading The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron for over a year now. It's not a book you just plow through. It is a journey to ponder and to experience slowly.
In the chapter called "Week 7," she talks about perfectionism. I found it to be extremely enlightening. Below are some tidbits from this chapter.
"Perfectionism has nothing to do with getting it right. It has nothing to do with fixing things. It has nothing to do with standards. Perfectionism is a refusal to let yourself move ahead. It is a loop - an obsessive, debilitating closed system that causes you to get stuck in the details of what you are writing or painting or making and to lose sight of the whole."
"We correct our originality into a uniformity that lacks passion and spontaneity."
"The perfectionist fixes one line of a poem over and over - until no lines are right. The perfectionist redraws the chin line on a portrait until the paper tears."
"Instead of enjoying the process, the perfectionist is constantly grading the results."
"In order to do something well, we must first be willing to do it badly."
I hope these words have inspired you to just do what you are inspired to do, then let go of it, stand back and say, "That's pretty good."
(By the way, I read and reread what I just wrote about five times...just to make sure it was right.)
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