I have a handwritten sign above my desk that says “MAKE A MESS” in thick black marker. It’s been there for years now, but it started as an act of desperation—a last-ditch attempt to save a novel I was convinced I was going to destroy. (For the full story behind that sign, see this post).
The book was Everyone Pays (recently republished as Love of a Preacher Man), and I had written myself into what felt like an impossible situation. Not because of plot problems or character issues, but because of something far more insidious: the fear that I was no longer capable of writing the book I had started.
The Interrupted Novel
I had begun Everyone Pays with momentum and clarity. The voice felt right, the story was flowing, and I was deep in the world I was creating. Then life intervened, as it tends to do. A series of events pulled me away from the manuscript for months. When I finally had the space to return to writing, I started a different project—The Maltese Jordans—thinking I’d come back to the preacher novel later.
But later turned into much later when my publisher expressed more interest in completing Everyone Pays than in pursuing the new direction I’d taken with The Maltese Jordans. Suddenly, I needed to return to a world I’d been away from for the better part of a year.
I opened the file, read through what I had written, and felt something close to panic.
The Zone Problem
The pages I read were good—better than I remembered, actually. The voice was strong, the characters felt real, and the story had momentum. But that was exactly the problem. This work represented me at a particular creative moment, in a specific headspace, with a certain energy and focus that I no longer felt I possessed.
I wasn’t in the book’s zone anymore.
I had moved apartments, experienced personal upheavals, written other things, lived a different life. The person who had written those first chapters felt like someone else entirely. How could I possibly continue a book in a voice that no longer felt like mine?
Every time I tried to add new material, I found myself stopping after a few sentences, convinced that what I was writing didn’t match the quality or tone of the existing work. I was terrified that any new words would contaminate what I’d already created—that readers would be able to sense the exact moment where the “good writer” stopped and the “imposter” began.
The Paralysis of Perfection
For weeks, I sat with the partial manuscript, reading and re-reading what I’d written, making tiny edits, adjusting word choices, doing everything except the one thing I needed to do: write forward.
I was trapped by my own respect for the existing work. Because I thought it was good, I felt I had to maintain that standard with every new sentence. Because it represented me at what felt like a creative peak, I was convinced that anything I added now would only diminish it.
The irony wasn’t lost on me. I was a writing coach who regularly told clients to push through perfectionism and trust their instincts. But when it came to my own work, I was paralyzed by the gap between my expectations and my current creative state.
Permission to Destroy
Finally, I realized I had two choices: abandon the book entirely or give myself permission to wreck it.
The second option felt almost as terrifying as the first, but it had one crucial advantage—it offered a path forward. Even if I destroyed what I’d written, at least I’d have tried. And if I was going to fail, I might as well fail completely rather than fail halfway.
So I made the sign. “MAKE A MESS.” I put it where I couldn’t avoid seeing it every time I sat down to write.
The sign wasn’t just a reminder—it was a contract with myself. It said: You have permission to write badly. You have permission to be out of sync with your previous work. You have permission to discover that your worst fears about your current abilities are true.
What Actually Happened
With that permission granted, something interesting occurred. I started writing.
Not carefully, not perfectly, not with the exacting standards I’d been imposing on myself. I wrote with the understanding that I might be making a mess, but that making a mess was better than making nothing at all.
The first few writing sessions felt strange. The new material didn’t sound exactly like the old material—my voice had evolved slightly, my concerns had shifted, my rhythm was a bit different. But instead of stopping when I noticed these differences, I kept going.
And gradually, something remarkable happened. The new voice didn’t clash with the old voice—it complemented it. The slight evolution in my writing actually enhanced the book’s emotional arc. Characters who had been developing in my subconscious for months came alive on the page with new depth.
Most surprisingly, the writing I’d been so afraid would “wreck” the book turned out to be some of the strongest material in the entire manuscript.
The Fear vs. Reality Gap
Looking back, I realize how dramatically I had overestimated the danger and underestimated my abilities. My worst-case scenario—that I would completely destroy a promising book—was so far from reality that it bordered on the absurd.
The truth was that even if my current writing had been significantly worse than my previous work (which it wasn’t), the solution would have been simple revision, not abandonment. Books aren’t precious artifacts that shatter when touched—they’re works in progress that improve through iteration.
But fear had made me treat my partial manuscript like a museum piece rather than a living document.
The Permission Paradox
The “Make a Mess” sign worked precisely because it lowered the stakes to a manageable level. When I gave myself permission to write badly, I removed the pressure that was causing me to write badly. When I accepted that I might wreck the book, I freed myself to discover that I probably wouldn’t.
This is the paradox I now share with clients: sometimes you have to give yourself permission to fail in order to succeed. Sometimes you have to be willing to make a mess in order to create something clean.
The sign wasn’t magic—it was psychology. It acknowledged my fears while refusing to let them control my actions.
Beyond the First Draft
Love of a Preacher Man went on to become one of my stronger novels, and the sections I’d been most afraid to write ended up being among my favorites. The book found its audience, and readers never mentioned sensing any discontinuity between the “old” writing and the “new” writing—because there really wasn’t any.
The experience taught me something valuable about the relationship between time and creative work. I had assumed that leaving a project for months would make it impossible to recapture its essence. What I discovered instead was that time away had actually deepened my understanding of the story and characters.
The break hadn’t destroyed my connection to the book—it had enriched it.
The Lesson for Other Writers
The “Make a Mess” sign remains above my desk because the fear it addresses never fully goes away. Every time I return to a project after time away, every time I start something new after completing something I’m proud of, every time I worry that my current abilities don’t match my previous achievements, the sign reminds me of an essential truth:
Your fears about your creative abilities are almost certainly worse than reality.
The voice you think you’ve lost is probably just evolving. The standards you think you can’t meet are probably higher than necessary. The work you think you’ll destroy is probably more resilient than you imagine.
Making Your Own Permission
You don’t need a literal sign to give yourself permission to make a mess, but you do need some kind of explicit acknowledgment that perfection is the enemy of completion. Whether it’s a note on your computer, a mantra you repeat, or a conversation with a trusted friend, find a way to grant yourself permission to write imperfectly.
Because here’s what I learned from that paralyzed period with Everyone Pays: the biggest risk isn’t that you’ll write something bad. The biggest risk is that you won’t write anything at all.
The sign above my desk is a reminder that I’d rather have a messy completed novel than a perfect unfinished one. And after years of coaching writers through similar struggles, I can say with confidence that most “messes” aren’t nearly as messy as writers fear—and even the genuinely messy ones can be fixed.
But you can’t fix what doesn’t exist.
So make your mess. Give yourself permission to be imperfect, to be out of sync with your previous work, to write your way back into your story rather than thinking your way back into it.
Your book is waiting on the other side of your perfectionism.
Struggling to return to a stalled project or move past perfectionism in your writing? My coaching helps writers break through creative paralysis and develop sustainable practices for completing their work. Contact me to schedule a consultation.
