(A version of this post was originally published October 9, 2017)

I have a love/hate relationship when it comes to talking about my mistakes. 

What I don’t love:

• The vulnerability. I’ve taught classes based on my writing mistakes, which seems like a fabulous idea until I start rehearsing. Spending so much time focused on the many, many mistakes I’ve made over the years can definitely leave me feeling deeply insecure and inadequate.

Things I love:

• The hope that I feel when I share mistakes. Not only do I see how I’ve grown as a writer, but I feel hopeful that I can either prevent writers from making the same mistakes I did, or help them to identify mistakes they’re currently making.
• Mistakes can feel like a weight, but talking about them takes away the power they have over me.

Many writers are perfectionists. We want to write perfectly, publish perfectly, and have perfect writerly lives. This, my friends, is impossible.  I want you to see evidence that you can make mistakes—lots and lots of mistakes—and still get to where you’re wanting to go. I will even argue that you won’t get there unless you’re willing to make decision that might end up being mistakes.

One of the earliest mistakes I made was firmly rooted in my perfectionism:

Obsessively Rewriting First Chapters

Do you find yourself rewriting the opening of your story over and over and over again? If so, you’re not alone. I meet lots of writers who do this!

This was the first real writing hurdle I had to work through when learning how to write a novel. I loved writing story beginnings. I would write my first few chapters and pass them out to my friends. They would give me feedback, and I would rewrite and pass the chapters back out. Then I would have an idea for writing the chapters differently, so I would rewrite them again…

On and on this went.

Here are the reasons why this is problematic:

You can’t finish a book this way.

Duh, right? If your goal is to write a full book, constantly rewriting the prologue isn’t going to get you there.

This is usually the reason that writers cite when they’re asking me how to fix this problem. “I want to write a full book but I can’t stop rewriting my first three chapters!”

Your growth as a writer is stunted. 

I was doing the same piece of the process over and over. It’s like if all you ever did was create characters, but you never put them in stories. Maybe you created amazing characters … or maybe you didn’t, because you can only find out if you plop them into their story and see how they work. 

I had no idea if my beginnings were good, because I never found out what the rest of the story was. I didn’t know what made a good story idea, or what ideas were big enough, or what kind of characters I needed, because I had never gotten past chapter three. It wasn’t until I found a story idea that I loved enough to push past chapter three that I started to grow as a writer.

You train yourself to be a shiny object chaser.

You know what happens if you don’t build the discipline to write the novel you want to write? You don’t learn how to push through the hard parts and get the novel written. You stay stuck.

Writing had always been pure joy for me because all I ever did was dream up the story idea (for most of us, that’s the easy part) and write the beginning, which is my favorite. I wrote when I wanted, and I wrote what I wanted, and if I wanted to write something else, that’s what I did.

Back when writing was my hobby, that was fine. But when I dedicated myself to being traditionally published, that mindset no longer worked. I had to train myself to push into the middle of a story rather than rewriting or starting a new story.

By erasing my writing mistakes and starting over, you can’t learn from them as well.

After I taught my first class about writing mistakes, a man came up to share how in many art classes they don’t want you to use pencils, because they don’t want you to be able to erase. Art teachers want you to see the lines that are wrong, so you can more clearly see the lines that are right. This is a great moment for the “mind blown” emoji.

By rewriting the same part of my story over over, I wasn’t improving anything, just changing it. I lost perspective on what worked and what didn’t.

You aren’t letting the first draft do its job:

When my daughter was nine, she had a teacher who called first drafts “the sloppy copy.” The job of the first draft is to get the story down without worrying about how to fix things that aren’t quite right yet. When we rewrite those first few chapters over and over without the rest of the story, we’re not trusting the first draft to do its job. The first draft just need to be “good enough” that we can go back through and hone it in edits.

Learning how to write a book—even a sloppy copy—from beginning to end is a huge accomplishment. I learned more from doing that once than I did from writing 50 different story beginnings.

If you struggle with obsessively rewriting, what can you do to get past this?

Here are a few ideas:

• Not every book idea is worth pushing through to the end. Even now, after publishing multiple books and writing many others, I still sometimes write a few chapters and then give up on a story. Sometimes I think I’m excited about an idea, but then I get in there and it just doesn’t work for me. Be kind to yourself if you decide to put a story aside for a while, even if you’ve rewritten those first chapters hundreds of times and you don’t want to “waste” your time investment. Just because you’re putting it aside now doesn’t mean you’re putting it aside forever.
• Push yourself to write a little further before giving up on a story. My pattern was to hit chapter four (which is usually around the time that a story transitions from beginning to middle) and then feel lost on where to go. Then I would either hit the eject button in favor of a new, exciting story idea. Or I would rewrite the first few chapters. If you’ve only ever gotten to chapter three, try to make it through chapter four or five. Even if you’re not sure you’re going in the right direction with the story. Just try to push yourself a bit further before walking away.
• Give yourself permission to be imperfect. This was huge for me. My issues with rewriting were rooted in my desires to turn out a perfect story. When I embraced the advice of writing bad first drafts, I began to make it through to the end.

What about you? Do you struggle with obsessively rewriting?

Stephanie Morrill writes books about girls who are on an adventure to discover their unique place in the world. She is the author of several contemporary young adult series, as well as two historical young adult novels, The Lost Girl of Astor Street and Within These Lines. Within These Lines was a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection, as well as a YALSA 2020 Best Fiction for Young Adults pick. Since 2010, Stephanie has been encouraging the next generation of writers at her website, GoTeenWriters.com, which has been on the Writer’s Digest Best Websites for Writers list since 2017. She lives in the Kansas City area, where she loves plotting big and small adventures to enjoy with her husband and three children. You can connect with Stephanie and learn more about her books at StephanieMorrill.com, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.