Getting Out of My Own Way, Part One

I felt it would be appropriate to have my first entry focus on “getting out of my own way” because this website is a physical manifestation of just that. I read the book, Get Out of Your Own Way (GOOTOW) by Mark Goulston, M.D. and Philip Goldberg, in preparation. Goulston and Goldberg dissect 40 different ways people self-defeat, and I resonated with an embarrassing amount of those 40. Instead of taking you on a journey of every way I utilize self-defeating behavior, I’m going to talk about eight of them (in two parts) that apply to my writing.

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I’ll start it off with “Procrastination”. Before reading chapter 3, I was convinced my procrastination stemmed from being lazy. But, GOOTOW talks about procrastination actually being rooted in loneliness, rather than laziness.

After some thought, I agreed with the authors. In college, I had no problem writing a short story or a poem when I had a professor, a syllabus, and classmates breathing down my neck to get it done. Now, years later, I don’t have deadlines, or due dates, or a multi-thousand dollar GPA at stake, so what’s the hurry? That short story I feel super excited about can wait. That topic I want to write about can sit on the top shelf and collect dust. Those characters I invented aren’t going anywhere, so why do I need to finish it today? Or this week? Or this year?

I kept putting off my writing goals and dreams because I was doing it alone. Goulston and Goldberg encourage their readers to enlist a supporter. A go to person for when you’re stuck, or full of self doubt, or to call when you’re sitting alone at a café crying about all the things you want to accomplish but “can’t”…

My enlistee has been my fiancé. For years, their poor soul has had to endure hours and hours of me talking about my goals and aspirations, then pick up the pieces when I don’t meet them. They’ve had to be the one that believes in me more than I believe in myself at times. Despite every effort of my self-defeating nature, they have stuck around to keep me accountable, to push me when I need it, and to give me the pep-talks and criticism I need. Launching my website and writing consistently are a direct result of me not feeling like I’m lost in a lonely abyss.

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I have a mile high stack of unfinished stories. The authors’ talk about “Quitting Too Soon” in chapter 32, and it confronted my curse of impatience. I love writing, I really do, but sometimes it can be boring. Last year, I realized I needed to fall in love with the whole process of writing. And, the “whole” process isn’t just creating the ideas and bringing them to life. It includes the research, the writing, the rewriting, and the rewriting of the rewrite. Then reading the rewrite fifty times, then rewriting it three more times. It can be time consuming, and not all that consumed time is fun.

But aside from self-defeating boredom, what also gets me to quit too soon is perfectionism. With both my writing and this website, I’m quick to give up if it’s not exactly what I want it to look or sound like. I would love for my first draft of a story to be the best and only draft, but that’s never the case, there’s always going to be a rewrite. Which, now that I think about it, is kind of freeing. The first draft isn’t about perfection, it’s just about getting the story out and on paper. When it comes to the website, I would spend so much time on formatting and figuring out how to work WordPress, but it was never what I wanted. So it kept going nowhere… until now of course.

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By indulging in these self-defeating behaviors, I was secretly relieved at my lack of progress on launching the website and finishing stories. This was exposed in chapter 35 of GOOTOW, “Letting Fear Run Your Life”. There are several things to be fearful of when you’re trying something new or putting yourself in a vulnerable situation. It becomes self-defeating when you let it stop you, and that’s exactly what I was doing. So when it came to procrastination and quitting because of boredom or perfectionism, I was happy to admit that those were the reasons I wasn’t progressing.

The hard part was admitting that I was afraid of not being in control. When my stories stay on my computer, or remain unfinished, I’m in control. The moment I put them online or submit them to competitions or journals, I’m not in control of what people think about them. The logic I used was that if I quit now, or push it off forever, no one will be able to say I’m not good enough. I just won’t give anyone the opportunity.

I had to stop letting fear determine what I did or did not do. I had to realize that by preventing potential negative feelings about my writing was only hurting me, not protecting me. I also had to realize the only way I’ll grow as a writer is if I put my work out there and get good, bad, or helpful feedback.

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The last self-defeating behavior of this post is one I just overcame. In chapter 40, Goulston and Goldberg discuss “Backing Down Because You Don’t Feel Ready”. I wish I kept a record of how many times I changed the launch date of this website. Last summer I had a launch event in my calendar that I kept moving back one week at a time. The days would crawl by and the date would get closer, so I would move it back and give myself more time to “be ready”.

The authors’ give an example of someone who kept backing down because they felt uncomfortable, and they thought those feelings signified they’re not ready. I felt uncomfortable last summer when I kept moving the launch date, and I feel uncomfortable now, but I feel ready. Ready for the good and bad that’ll come my way by putting my writing out there.

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Next Monday’s entry will be about the other four self-defeating behaviors that loom over my writing. If you’d like to dive into your own deeply rooted self-inflicted defeats, Get Out of Your Own Way by Mark Goulston, M.D. and Philip Goldberg is on Amazon.

Citation:

Goulston M.D., Mark. Goldberg, Philip. Get Out of Your Own Way. New York, Penguin Random House LLC, 1996.