RE: The Value of Giving Up: The Best we can Do is... Our Best
I think the challenge for me is that my best is often a never-ending goal. I have gotten sucked into editing loops where I keep revising and tweaking and improving my work, but never feeling like I’ve achieved my absolute and very best. Eventually the improvements in quality are minuscule (though they do still exist!) with each editing pass, until I finally say “this is good enough” and just post the darn thing.
I’ve gotten pretty good at recognizing the nature of diminishing returns when polishing my work. I usually stop myself after just one or two passes. But by definition, that means I am rarely, if ever, posting my “best” work. I value quality, but for me it is a matter of reaching a certain threshold and then moving on to something new.
I hear you! And it can be a slippery slope if we allow "doing our best" to slide over into perfectionism. Of course, we all have our unique and different approaches to the creative process... but my experience has been that I can spend so much time "overfinessing" something to where it actually is never finished... and I start getting frustrated and missing deadlines...
Most of my writing is a two part process. I write a very rough draft that's basically flow of consciousness... and (in most cases) I leave it alone for a couple of days... unless I feel particularly driven to finish it. Then I come back to it and fine tune it (or discard it as garbage, remarkably often!) and publish it... try not to do too much work on it.
As you say, there's diminishing returns when you keep trying to polish something up too much.
Oh that’s interesting! I’ve never tried that. I always feel compelled to finish a post the same day I start it, but I never questioned why I feel that imperative. Maybe I should give your approach a shot!
I have this tendency to re-read my post shortly after it goes up only to find a bunch of edits and mistakes. Your way might cut down on that!
That's actually how I originally got started with that two-part approach: Making SO many errors. I just discovered that if you walk AWAY and do something else, you forget JUST enough of what you've written to where you are reading it with fresh eyes, rather than "filling in gaps" psychologically... which causes you to skip over mistakes.
I don't know how many ideas you generally have working, but it's also an approach that cuts way down on "heat of the moment" commentaries that actually are pretty lame, once you stop and think about it.
Hah! I know what you mean. That kind of happened to me yesterday and I just got carried away with a spontaneous idea and it turned out so terribly... that I entered it into a comedy contest, hah!
I have a little memo on my phone I keep ideas on. Oh hey! I don't know if you take requests, but if you are looking for ideas for upcoming posts of your own, I would love to read a full blown description of your whole creative process - from the moment the idea pops into your head to the moment you click post. I feel like I could learn a lot from someone who has "been there, done that".