I was talking to some students recently about knowing when to move on from a writing project; when to send something out to readers. I think we all have some sense of self-consciousness when we look back at our own work, especially if we’re deciding to send it into the world somewhere—it can be a bit like that weird feeling you get when you hear a recording of your own voice.
How does one distinguish between healthy self-critique and unhelpful, self-deprecating judgment? I’ve started to think about this in terms of ‘ick’ and investment.
‘Ick’ is that intuitive sense that something just isn’t right—like taking a sip of very mildly off milk: That’s what I feel when I know the work is fine, but just isn’t as good as it could be. My ‘ick’ radar helps me to know when the revisions are finished.
Investment is a bit a different—I think of this as the thing I feel when I say or write something a little too real for comfort, and reveal something about myself in the process. Conflating ‘ick’ with investment makes it much harder to send something out into the world.