Oh, sweet baby formatting Jesus, look at this shiny, precious thing.
A formatting feature in Facebook groups?
Oh, the possibilities!
It’s gonna be amazing for writing posts. I’m practically drooling, imagining perfectly spaced lines, clean breaks between paragraphs, the kind of formatting that’d make Helvetica weep.
And then reality comes along, kicks down the door, and smacks me upside the head with a chair.
Because what happens? You spend hours fiddling. Hours. Spaces, line breaks, indents, making sure it all looks just so. And then—oh, and then—it shits the bed.
It collapses into a flaming pile of hot, glitchy garbage.
Your carefully curated masterpiece looks like it was formatted by a drunk squirrel with a vendetta against whitespace.
But you know what?
This isn’t about Facebook formatting. Not really.
I mean this also just an email…
And totally not me telling you need to join my group because I’m going to sharing even more in depth posts over there…
It’s about perfectionism.
Perfectionism is the serial killer of creativity. It wears a mask of virtue, whispering sweet nothings in your ear: “I just want it to be right. I just want it to look good. I just want it to be perfect.” Meanwhile, your story is bleeding out on the floor, dying a slow, agonising death by a thousand tiny, nitpicky cuts.
So here’s what I’ve started doing. I write my posts/emails in Notepad. Basic-ass, boring Notepad. No formatting, no distractions, no blinking cursor judging me like it’s auditioning for a Black Mirror episode. Just words on a screen. And then I throw it into Facebook and let the formatting gods do their worst and here in these emails I just spice it up so it makes your reading a little easier…
Because here’s the thing: You’re wasting time. You’re wasting so much time. The same way you waste time adjusting margins, downloading new fonts, or rearranging your desktop icons for the thirteenth time today. Your coffee’s cold. Your post is unwritten. Your story is still a limping idea trapped in your head.
And somewhere out there in the multiverse, your future readers—your audience, your people—are aging. They’re waiting for the book or post or story you’re too scared to write badly.
Stop it.
STOP IT RIGHT NOW.
Here’s the unglamorous, unsexy truth about writing.
It’s not about inspiration striking like a goddamn lightning bolt from Olympus. It’s about showing up. Every day. Like a stubborn postal worker in a hurricane.
“Neither snow, nor rain, nor poorly aligned paragraphs shall stay this writer from their appointed word count.”
You don’t need perfect. Perfect is a lie. Perfect is quicksand and it just filled with procrastination.
Because here’s what’s going to happen:
- Facebook will eat your formatting.
- Microsoft Word will crash and take your unsaved work with it.
- Scrivener will update itself into a whole new language just when you’ve finally figured out how to use it.
The universe does not care about your pursuit of perfect. The universe mocks your Helvetica fetish. (And I get it—god, I love Helvetica—but still.)
So write it anyway. Write it messy. Write it ugly. Write it like a caffeinated squirrel fighting a keyboard. That’s not a bug; it’s a feature.
First drafts are supposed to look like a crime scene. You’ll clean it up later. Polish comes later. Right now, your only job is to vomit those words onto the page.
Want to know the big secret handshake of successful writers?
They finish the damn thing.
That’s it. That’s the secret. They wrote the book, ugly and raw and messy as hell. They finished it. Because a finished, imperfect book is worth infinitely more than the perfect one still trapped in your head.
So close the tab with writing tips. Shut down Pinterest. Stop rearranging your desk like it’s some sacred writing ritual. Open literally anything that can hold words, and write.
Write like someone’s holding your coffee hostage.
Write like autocorrect isn’t actively plotting your demise.
Write like there’s a fire in your gut and the only way to put it out is to get the words down.
Write the messy Facebook post. Write the ugly first draft. Hit send. Hit save.
Done is better than perfect.
The world doesn’t need another perfect manuscript gathering dust on an old hard drive that’s one power surge away from death. The world needs your story. The messy, imperfect, glorious chaos only you can create.
So go. Write it. Make it ugly. Make it real. Make it yours.
And for the love of all that’s holy, hit save occasionally. Because nothing kills the soul quite like losing a banger of a post to a browser crash.
Now get to it.
Stephen Walker
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Stephen Walker
Unit 146317
PO Box 7169
Poole
BH15 9EL
United Kingdom