Member-only story

3 Reasons Why You Should Ignore Your Writing Perfectionism And Just Hit Publish

Imperfectly published is better than perfect but unpublished.

Nicolas Cole
4 min readJan 22, 2025

One of the Digital Writing Laws I live by is:

“Imperfectly Published Is Better Than Perfect But Unpublished.”

And it goes right to the heart of defeating the age-old writer’s excuse:

“It’s not ready yet.”

So ask yourself: when will it be ready?

One of the biggest realizations writers need to face early on is that perfect is an unreasonable standard to meet. Nothing is “perfect”. More importantly, aiming for perfection slows you down. Other writers, who aren’t aiming for perfect, end up zooming right by you.

Perfectionism leads to a range of delaying tactics:

  • Redrafting
  • Overediting
  • Procrastination

So if this sounds like you, here are 3 reasons why you should ditch the perfectionism and just hit “Publish” instead.

Reason #1: Allow yourself to create “junk”

The vast majority of writing advice books can be boiled down to a single rule: Write.

--

--

Nicolas Cole
Nicolas Cole

Written by Nicolas Cole

100M+ Views | 5x Author | Co-founder of Ship 30 for 30 | Want to start writing online? Get the Ultimate Guide: https://startwritingonline.com

Responses (11)