I’m not much of a perfectionist. In my personal and professional life I’m kind of a hot mess in many ways, actually; I don’t plan ahead much and like to wing things—I’m the clichéd guy who tosses assembly instructions aside and just begins fitting things together. The end result is either exactly right or wrong in a terrifying or beautiful way.
In writing, I’m also not particularly worried about getting everything just-so. I’m a Pantser, of course, and that’s part of it—Pantser tend to charge ahead without worrying how they’re going to find their way back. But another part of it is just personality: I don’t like to get bogged down in details. I’m big-picture. I’d rather get the general story down on paper and then worry about fixing up the details later.
In other words, I like to fix things in post.
No CGI in Novels, Unfortunately
Some writers are meticulous planners who have every detail figured out before they start writing, but my first drafts tend to be hot messes of changing character names, disappearing characters, plot threads that go nowhere, and the occasional Truck Driver’s Tense Change. In movies, there’s a lot of post-production work that goes into fixing mistakes. Fixing things in “Post” is an accepted part of the process.
Why not apply that to novels? Obviously, all writers do just that—most of us revise our first drafts to some extent before showing them around to people. The trick is to internalize that fact and make it part of your tool chest—in other words, stop worrying about getting things correct as you write. Instead, barrel through and assume you’ll fix things in post—i.e., revision. The end result is a speedier path to a completed first draft, a big-picture story that works on the macro levels. All that will be left is to go back and fix up the micro stuff that you pushed past.
The advantage to this is simple: You’ll have more completed drafts. It’s easier to fix up small problems—even a lot of them—when you have a completed story than it is to stop everything and contemplate each small problem on its own as you encounter it. And the more completed drafts you have, the better chances you have of having something worth selling.
Of course, your mileage may vary. If your manuscript descends into literary madness because of this advice, I have a pocket full of smoke bombs and a bag full of new identities.