The writing trick that bypassed my inner critic entirely
Stop polishing. Start playing. Here's how.
I spent years polishing the same three chapters.
Not because they were almost perfect—but because perfectionism had convinced me that if I could just get these opening pages right, the rest of the book would flow. (Spoiler: it didn’t work that way.)
The truth? I wasn’t writing. I was stalling.
I was rearranging sentences, swapping adjectives, obsessing over paragraph breaks, anything to avoid moving forward into the uncertain, imperfect middle of the story. Because moving forward meant writing badly. It meant producing rough, messy, first-draft garbage that didn’t match the shimmering vision in my head.
And perfectionism hates garbage.
So, I stayed stuck. For years.
Maybe you know this feeling. You sit down to write and immediately feel that tightness in your chest, the weight of expectations, the fear of writing something that doesn’t measure up. You second-guess every word before it hits the page. You delete more than you keep.
Or worse: you don’t write at all.
Then I discovered something that changed everything.
I came across an essay in Medium by Laini Taylor, an internationally bestselling, award-winning novelist, where she described something called “attic notebooks.” And honestly? It sounded weird. Maybe even a little reckless.
Here’s the concept: You commit to filling up a notebook in short, regular sessions (10-15 minutes), but here’s the catch—you never look back. You write forward only, never peeking at what you wrote, and once you reach the last page, you close it, date the cover, and set it aside for a week or two before reading it (actually, Laini recommends a month, but I can’t wait that long!).
That’s it. That’s the whole practice.
When I first read this, my perfectionist brain immediately protested. What if I write something brilliant and forget it? What if I need to reference something? What if—
But that’s exactly the point.
The magic is in the forgetting.
By removing the ability to judge your work, you remove the tyranny of perfectionism. You can’t polish what you can’t see. You can’t delete what you won’t remember. You just... write.
And something incredible happens when you do this consistently: your inner critic gets bored and wanders off. It has nothing to critique, no sentences to second-guess, no paragraphs to rearrange. It withers from lack of attention.
Meanwhile, you get to play.
Laini describes it as “collaboration with the unknown,” like showing up on the beach every day to see what treasures wash ashore. Some days it’s seaweed and broken shells. But some days? Pure gold. Story ideas you’d never have found through careful, conscious plotting. Character voices that surprise you. Imagery that makes you shiver.
She says that both contenders for her next novel were born in attic notebooks. Not from careful planning or outlining, but from playful, pressure-free writing exercises.
Here’s what I learned when I tried it:
The notebook didn’t make me a better writer overnight. But it did something more important: it made me a writer who actually writes.
Because I wasn’t trying to write well. I was just trying to write freely. And in that freedom, something loosened. The words came faster. The ideas got weirder (in the best way). I stopped caring if a sentence was good and started caring if it was alive.
I started filling notebooks, thin ones, 40 pages each, nothing intimidating. Three pages per session, roughly 15 minutes. Some prompts were silly (”cookie bitch” was one of Laini’s examples, and I’m still laughing). Some of my writing was evocative. Some of it led nowhere. But some... some opened doors I didn’t even know existed.
And when I finally opened that first notebook two weeks later?
I barely remembered any of it. It felt like finding someone else’s journal, full of fragments and images and half-formed stories that I could now use. No attachment. No preciousness. Just raw material, waiting to be shaped.
Your turn.
If you’re stuck in the polishing trap, writing the same chapter over and over, or worse, not writing at all, I want you to try this.
Get a thin notebook.
Set a timer for 15 minutes.
Pick any prompt that sparks something, or just start with “I remember when...” or “What if...” or even “The truth is...”
Write without stopping. Don’t cross anything out. Don’t reread. Just fill the page and turn it.
Do it again tomorrow. And the day after.
Your only job is to fill the notebook. That’s it. Not to write well. Not to produce something usable. Just to show up and play.
Because here’s what I’ve learned: Your best ideas, the ones that will actually break through, the ones that feel electric and alive, they’re not hiding behind more planning or better outlines.
They’re hiding behind perfectionism.
And the fastest way past perfectionism? Stop taking yourself so seriously. Stop trying to get it right. Start playing.
The book you’re meant to write is waiting on the other side of messy, imperfect, joyful play.
Go find it.
✨Ready to Start Playing?
Here’s a “Word Spill” game for you. Set a timer for 2 minutes. Write down a list of words that flow to you. Just allow whatever words come to your mind to flow onto the page in a stream of consciousness format. After the 2 minutes are up, look at your word list and see if any of them can be strung together to form a writing prompt. Or maybe even an idea for a story. Have fun with it!
Attribution note: This newsletter was inspired by Laini Taylor’s brilliant essay on attic notebooks and the creative process. If you want to dive deeper into her approach, I highly recommend seeking out her writing on the subject; it’s transformative stuff for any writer struggling with perfectionism.