In many ways, I don't care to be perfect. The exception is when I'm writing something.
I can sit in front of a blank computer screen for hours, wracking my brain for the perfect words. I have a bit of an obsession with having a well-written, witty introduction (or in journalism terms "lead"). I will write a few words or sentences, decide that I don't like what I'm writing and then delete it. This becomes an endless cycle of wasting a lot of time.
In most cases, I don't have trouble generating ideas about what to write (hence, this post). My problem is articulating my thoughts in a way that "I" like and writing it down. In short, I prevent myself from being productive.
I've always heard that bloggers should post regularly (like multiple times a week) in order to increase readership and ranking on Google (i.e. search engine optimization), but I've always had trouble with that. When I started my food blog Tasting Toronto on Wheels, I initially tried to write weekly restaurant reviews, but that got increasingly difficult and expensive. When I started Ling, I promised myself that I would post regularly (at least once a week). I've achieved this goal for the most part, but there have been some lapses in between blog posts.
I'm always trying to think of posts that I think people might want to read and the journalist in me feels like my posts need to be high quality and written like a magazine article. In my head, I know that putting that much pressure on myself for a site that I have complete control of is unnecessary, but I truly care about ALL of the work I put into the world.
Going forward, when I write anything I will try not to self-edit and just type whatever comes to mind and if it's crap then I'll deal with it after.
If you have any tips on overcoming writer's block and my perfectionist ways, I'll gladly take them in the comments section below.
(By the way, this was the quickest post I've ever written.)
