You Can’t Write Well If You’re Always Performing
You sit down, a cup of steaming hot coffee in your hand (the fancy kind), in your leather-bound chair with your cozy blanket gracefully hanging from the edge of your seat. The lights are dimmed and the weather is simply just exquisite, the kind of day that seems to be designed for inspiration. Everything is perfectly arranged and you look like a writer—an excellent one—from the outside. You slowly put your fingers to the keys on your laptop staring at the black page in front of you. It holds an infinite number of possibilities, endless worlds and limitless dimensions. And the only barrier—the only restriction—is yourself.
Every other thing is perfect: your battery is full, your calendar is clear, the hot coffee in your hand is soothing against your cold skin. But something, a leash, is pulling you; blurring your mind with concerns and prohibiting your hands from moving. Even though there is an illusion that you are alone, you soon realise that is completely incorrect. There is an entire audience: clapping, judging, whispering. You hear scatters of their conversations, every gossip is another whip to your back. So you listen, trying to escape their unforgiving criticism by creating something unjudgeable, something flawless, something perfect.
You go over every single sentence before even thinking about the next one, trying to find the absolute perfect recipe. Sooner or later you will realize that there is no satisfying your inner editor, there is no repressing that dictator that rules freely in your head, oppressing any and all ideas and caging every last bit of your creativity in dark dungeons because they lack perfection.
Now your writing has become a performance trying to entertain and satisfy your brutal audience. This flawed performance kills your vulnerability, suffocating your expression and assaulting every bit of authenticity and identity. So now you are left with a glazed glass vase, it's pretty, smooth and every curve is meticulously crafted but it’s empty.
This chase of aesthetic perfection shadows the literary elements and the raw value of your voice. Anne Lamott, in her book Bird by Bird says: “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.” I think this is the most immaculate way to put how turning writing into a performance art devalues your work, silencing your soul. Because regardless of the beauty of the vase, people will always choose the one filled with wild, colorful, extraordinary flowers. Prose can gleam like glass and still say nothing. A slightly clumsy truth is worth more than a perfectly phrased lie.
So how can you break from this shiny cage? How can you plant real, fragment, wild flowers into your vase? How can you escape from the spotlight? Here is the advice I return to whenever I feel that leash tighten again and when my inner editor screams too loud:
The Manuscript is Untouchable
When you sculpt as you write, you’re interrupting flow with fear. While writing a manuscript, do not go back to “fix a little mistake” or “this word sounds nicer here” these are little traps the inner editor is trying to pull you in. Terry Pratchett says “The first draft is just you telling yourself the story” So let yourself do exactly that. No judgment. No audience. Just raw honesty. Don't focus on tiny mistakes or polished sentences, chase the essence, the thing that's alive and burning in your soul but you can’t quite name it just yet. You must allow chaos on the page before it metamorphoses into something beautiful.
Write What You Need to Write
Writing is not a PR campaign. The version of you who writes for applause will never create anything worth clapping for. So stop trying to please the ear and start focusing on writing what matters. Because the best writing carries emotional weight, not decorative elegance. As long as you chase style at the cost of sincerity you can never achieve a lasting piece. The most unforgettable paragraphs don’t impress the mind; they disrupt the soul. They sting. They haunt. You cannot write well if you're trying to be liked. You cannot write honestly if you're trying to look smart. You cannot write anything real if you're constantly trimming the edges to make it prettier for public view. You have to remember your first reader is yourself. So say what you need to instead of what sounds lyrical.
Just Start
The blank page, the endless void isn't the enemy. Your hesitation is. You don't need the perfect environment, a full setup or a nice cozy day in order to write. These are just excuses and the only way to write something authentic, true and real is to simply just start. Maybe on a piece of napkin with the pen you found rolled over in the street, maybe back at the classroom or even while waiting for your mom to pick you up. These made up criteria about a perfect writing environment is nothing but an illusion. The only requirement is for you to start. It can be meaningless, silly or even cringe—but nevertheless, it is a start.
Miserable Food Critic from Ratatouille
Remember Ratatouille, an all-time classic movie, where basically a rat becomes a chef in the heart of Paris. Remember the miserable food critique Anton Ego: calcified by cynicism and devoured by his search for perfection. Once the man who loved food is now consumed by his critique and expectations. The joy rotted away and the passion faded into a bitter unpleasable appetite. Writers beware: polish can turn into poison. Rotting your passions from the inside. You may start out hungry for meaning and end up starved by performance. Don’t become Anton Ego-disillusioned by perfection and performance- remember why you first started writing, before everything felt so complicated and suffocating. Write for yourself, not for the non-existing molds you try to squish into. Your writing doesn’t need to be perfect or genius or a literary masterpiece, it only needs to be yours.
LITTLE TIPS WHEN YOU FEEL OVERWHELMED
Use bullet points to jot down ideas, you can connect them later.
Set a timer and write non-stop for 15 minutes, see where the flow takes you (you never know what's at the end of the river)
Switch to pen and paper, there is something ancient and intimate about handwriting.
Stop mid sentence. It is easier to start with a half-written idea; you don't have to face a blank page, you'll already have momentum.
Imagine your piece as an egg. You get so caught up in polishing the shell— making it smooth, symmetrical, admired from the outside — that you forget the valuable part is only accessible when the shell is cracked, the true treasure is hidden inside. It isn't smooth or buttery like the shell, it looks sticky and wonky but in the end the shell is worthless and the yolk is the valuable part of the egg—it’s where the nourishment lies. So what I am trying to say is you have to go beyond impression to reach expression. Drop the mask, let it shatter beneath your words; that's where freedom and clarity comes.