Nobody plans for the year their mother gets sick, or the relationship that ends badly, or the job that disappears, or the diagnosis that reorders everything. Nobody schedules the grief. It just arrives, and suddenly the life you were living, including the writing life you were building, has to be renegotiated from the ground up.

You know, intellectually, that done is better than perfect. You've heard it enough times that it's practically a bumper sticker. You believe it in the abstract. You have probably said it to other writers when they were spinning in revision circles, and you meant it, and it was true.

You sent it. You clicked publish, or submit, or share, or you handed it across a table to someone whose opinion matters to you. For a moment you felt the relief of it, the clean exhale of something that had been held finally being released.

Perfectionism has excellent PR. It shows up on job interviews as the humble brag disguised as a flaw. It gets framed as caring deeply, as having high standards, as being unwilling to put anything into the world that isn't worthy. It sounds, if you say it right, almost like a virtue.

It usually starts innocently enough. You're procrastinating, or taking a break, or just idly scrolling, and you happen to see that a writer you know has landed an agent. Or published a book. Or has forty thousand newsletter subscribers. Or got a glowing review in a publication you've been too intimidated to submit to.

At some point in your writing life, probably more than once, you've had a version of this thought: everyone else here knows what they're doing and I am one exposed seam away from being found out.