@Kathy- congrats on starting the process! I think the best advice is just to be patient. Keep moving forward and you will finish a draft. It won’t be that great, but so what? Over time, you can make it better. You can make it better on your own, and you can hire people to help make it better. There are lots of options.

Several things you said in this post resonated with me (paraphrased): time is elastic, it’s easier to turn something into something better than to create something, and that you wrote fast when you turned off your inner critic. These things are encouraging to me because I’ve been (not) working on a book idea for years, and I’ve finally started *actually* working on it. I’m finding it both easier and harder than I expected, but now that I have a plan in place, I’m finally seeing that it really is possible.

@The Frugal Girl – Exactly. If something doesn’t exist, it can’t be perfect. Indeed, existence is a pretty necessarily part of any quality whatsoever.

@Emily – A year or so ago I read about the Facebook “Done is Better Than Perfect” quote and have really taken that to heart. Particularly at work, I found myself going over and over something when it really was fine. I’ve not had one person give something back because it wasn’t perfect. This has really helped my productivity at work.

Yeah, it’s kind of like Anne Lamott’s shitty first draft idea. If you can’t get something out onto the page, you will never get anywhere because there’s nothing to even edit!

@Emily – interesting question. I think there is a time and place for the inner critic to shine in her full glory. That time is not when you’re trying to get something down. I’m a big fan of writing something, then coming back to it and letting the inner critic work her magic. She is necessary to keep one from spewing complete crap. But if she prevents anything from existing in the first place, then that’s a problem.

@Arden – I doubt it’s laziness, for you or ARC. It may be that the things you don’t do you just don’t want to do! There’s nothing wrong with that. I keep thinking I should take some sort of group exercise class. And then I realize I don’t actually really want to do it.

I’m not sure. Interesting question. I do follow through on some major things (for instance: grad school which was severely life sucking). Lazy? It’s easier to do research on my butt than to actually put it into action?

I am also interested in Arden’s suggested topic, though for me the reason is my fear of failure/perfectionism that leads to “why bother starting”. Working on that 😀