Overcoming Perfectionism: How to Use Your Writing Process to Finish that Draft with Michelle Niemann

Instructor: Michelle Niemann

Does perfectionism slow your writing process down? Do you find yourself tweaking the same paragraph or section over and over—and then discovering that in fact you need to jettison it entirely? Do you have a draft of an essay, memoir, or novel that you’ve worked and reworked so much that you don’t know how to tell when it’s finished?

In this class, we’ll discuss and try out some concrete strategies for breaking out of perfectionistic habits. The writing process is always messy—this class doesn’t offer any false shortcuts. Instead, we’ll develop practices that draw on the messiness of the process itself to finally complete that draft.

While I’ll share what I’ve learned from years of working with writers one-on-one, these practices and strategies always need to be tailored to the individual writer’s process. So, as a participant, you’ll be asked to share what you love and hate about your writing process—and to bring at least part of that recalcitrant draft so that you can experiment with it during our class.