Article Writing: How to Kill the Perfectionist Monster So You Can Write and Post More Articles

Q: I enjoyed the call the other night, and have written up one article using the "7 tips" format. My challenge is/remains...I continue to tweak and edit or phrase here and there, and I have a hard time being satisfied enough to let the piece rest. Your format helped keep me focused and structured, and so I must confess that I have written this practice article in a lot less time than I normally produce a piece, so that's still a "win" in my book! Is there a general guideline or a range of time that you recommend to aim for in completing a piece?

It's easy to get caught up in constant tweaking, especially if you are a perfectionist, as many people are prone to be. One reframe would be pursue excellence and not perfection. You cannot reach perfection, and you just wind up frustrated. You can reach excellence.

I would rather see you get up a grammatically correct, correctly spelled (use your spell check and have some one else proofread it) article with good content, and then tweak it once it is up, which you can do if you must, than try to get it perfect before you post it.

As hockey great Wayne Gretsky said - "You miss 100% of the shots you do not take."

As far as time, it sort of takes as long as it takes, but you want to be constantly shortening that time. The best way to do that is to write many articles, post them regularly, and you get into the swing of it.