My writing never feels finished enough to share
Decide what “good enough” means at each draft stage, so you can let work go and get useful feedback.
In short
Start here, today. Pick the piece you've been holding back. At the top, write which stage it's at (zero, first, working or polished) and the two questions you most want a reader to answer. Then put a send-by date in your calendar within the next two weeks. This takes about 20 minutes.
After that, work through these steps. Choose one to jump to it.
Step by step
Tick each step as you finish it. Open a step for the how.
0 of 6 steps done
Name the stage of each draft
A zero draft is for you, for getting ideas down; a first draft has every section and a visible argument, with gaps marked. A working draft has been revised after feedback and the argument holds. A polished draft is ready for examiners, with clean prose, complete references and correct formatting. Most of your time belongs in the middle two.
Decide what good enough means for this stage
Write a short checklist for the stage you're at. For a first draft it might be: every section exists, each one makes a point, and gaps are flagged. If those are true, the draft is done for now, even if the sentences are clunky.
Set a send-by date and tell someone
Choose a date and tell your supervisor or a peer to expect the draft. An external date turns “when it's ready” into a decision you've already made. On the day, send it with a note on what's unfinished.
Share earlier, with framing
Send the draft with a line on its stage and the questions you want answered. “Does the argument in section 2 hold?” gets you far better feedback than leaving the reader to guess, and it stops them spending their time on commas you already plan to fix.
Park the polishing
When you catch yourself perfecting a sentence, highlight it or add a comment and move on. Save these for a polishing pass at the very end. By then, many of those sentences will have been rewritten or cut for other reasons.
Keep a record of what sharing brings
Log the comments you receive in the Feedback Tracker. Over a few months you'll have evidence that early drafts get useful suggestions rather than verdicts on you, which makes the next send easier.
Words you can use
Is this you? Signs to look for
- You've been “nearly done” with the same chapter for months.
- You rewrite the first few pages again and again and rarely reach the end.
- You keep telling your supervisor the draft will come next week.
- You spend an hour on one sentence while whole sections are still missing.
Why this happens
Perfectionism in writing usually means treating every draft as if it were the final one. If each version has to be ready for an examiner, nothing is ever ready, because a chapter can't be polished until its argument is settled, and the argument often isn't settled until someone else has read it.
Polishing early also costs real time. Days spent on the wording of a section that later gets cut, moved or reframed are days lost. The feedback you most need on an early draft is about argument and structure, and a reader can give that on rough prose just as well as on smooth prose.
Underneath, there's often a fear that the draft will show you aren't good enough. Holding it back feels safer, but it only delays the feedback and makes it more expensive to act on. Problems found in a first draft take an afternoon to fix. The same problems found in a polished draft can take a month.
Worth a look (4)
- PatterPat Thomson writes often about drafting, revising and letting work go.
- Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)Free guides on every part of academic writing, from structuring a paragraph to citing sources. A good first stop when you're unsure how something should look.
- Writing Center Tips & ToolsShort, friendly handouts answer almost any writing question, from literature reviews and abstracts to passive voice and conclusions. Reach for them when one particular thing is tripping you up.
- Writing AdviceShort, practical pages walk you through planning, drafting and revising, with advice on literature reviews, lab reports and using sources. They're easy to dip into when you have one question.
When to bring someone in
If you haven't been able to send your supervisor anything for months, tell them what's going on. Most supervisors have seen this many times and would much rather read something rough than keep waiting. A writing centre advisor can be a lower-stakes first reader. If perfectionism is affecting much more than your writing, or comes with constant anxiety, your university's counselling service can help.
Find the right person, or talk to Ify