tips for perfectionism?
i have a bad habit of perfectionism that leads to constant editing of very minor things and it’s something that both exhausts me, and makes me worry that it’s annoying to my readers. I write for myself, so i’m not extremely bothered if people don’t look into things as deeply as i do, but it’s becoming a bit of a problem. i’m somewhat new to fanfiction writing.
im fairly certain that i’ve made a mistake with grammar in my dialogue and i’ve been debating on whether it’s worth going back through 170k+
words to fix it. basically, i didn’t put a period after dialogue if i had an action after it.
an examples if that helps;
“You’re Cairn’s creation. She made a monster. You’d both do well not to create anything ever again,” his words practically clip the end of her sentence.
since it doesn’t get followed by a dialogue tag (said, whispered, muttered, etc), is it grammatically incorrect?
EDIT: I feel like it’s relevant to mention that I do have OCD (diagnosed), so that probably contributes a lot to eat. Not looking for mental health advice, but I feel like it would help to know.
when I edit, i completely change the font, ctrl + H for
my common typos/errors, read out loud, and also read how it looks when its sitting as a draft on the sites i post on.
Posted Mar 6, 2026, 3:53 PM UTC · edited