Writing & Blackheads: Zeroing in on Every Flaw

I told my dermatologist I had blackheads. I didn’t know what the deal was. Was it my medicine? My moisturizer? Where were these disgusting things coming from?

After examining my face, he said, “You don’t have blackheads. You just have normal acne. Sometimes they look like blackheads, but that’s not what you have. In fact, blackheads are very hard to get rid of.”

I scrunched my eyebrows together. “Okaaaaay.” Then I pulled out ole reliable that I love to use on doctors: “Are you sure?”

He smiled and said: “Women love to get under big bright lights and magnifying glasses to see all their pores and blemishes. They look at their faces and say, ‘Ah! Look how gross my skin is!’ But no one else can see any of that.”

I cringed because he was so right. I will lean in to my mirror, sometimes with the flashlight on my phone, and study my pores, scrutinizing my every blemish.

“In fact, you have small pores. Your pores look good,” he told me.

I was flabbergasted. Small pores? No! They’re like sink holes! I often fear one of my dogs will slip and fall into them.

But he insisted I had no blackheads, that I had small pores, and that I’ve taken good care of my skin. Yes, I have breakouts, but it’s part of life, he said with a shrug.

By the time I got to the car after my appointment, I had an epiphany: I treat much of my writing like my pores. I zero in on every flaw. I shine bright lights on the blemishes, almost hoping for more to appear. I ask people, “Don’t you see the imperfection? It’s right there! It’s ghastly!”

I see in my writing what other people just cannot see. I hunt for flaws, and I do not mean grammatical errors. My novel, The Suicide Tree, released in 2018, and to this day, I think of the debris I’d love to swiftly clean up. I’d give more depth to my villain. I’d add more cyberpunk scenes with my protagonist. I’d do more research on dissociative identity disorder.

But in reality, do those flaws exist? Because from what I’ve seen in my Amazon reviews, people loved that story. But I just can’t accept that, can I?

I still find flaws — just like I find imaginary blackheads on my face — in my published works, and all I want to do is put a Biore strip on them and yank them out!

But if I did that, if I tried to rid my books of all these “flaws,” how on earth could I possibly write new stories? If I were so caught up with the imperfections in my books, how could I even finish them? At some point, I have to set down the magnifying glass, turn off the bright light, and leave my unseen flaws alone.

I take more vitamins a day than Jennifer Aniston. I use the best makeup I can find. I do facials and wash my bedding religiously. I drink so much water that I’m starting to think wearing Depends will save me tons of time. And yet, I still have blemishes. I do not have perfect skin.

I go through rewrites after rewrites. I work with beta readers. I hire content editors, copy editors, and proofreaders. I go out of my way to put my best work out there. And yet, I still have flaws in my writing. I do not write perfect books.

We writers are always going to see big disgusting zits in our books that no one else even notices. Believe me: I would love to get into The Suicide Tree and start cleansing it of all unrighteousness. But I have other books to write. I have other art to create.

I don’t have an ending to this, really. All I know is that I struggle with perfectionism — from my writing to my skin — and I hope that one day I’ll win that battle. Biore strips or not.

An expert editor, best-selling author, and book marketer, Shayla Raquel works one-on-one with writers every day. A lifelong lover of books, she has been in the publishing industry for ten years and specializes in self-publishing.

Her award-winning blog teaches new and established authors how to write, publish, and market their books.

She is the author of the Pre-Publishing Checklist, “The Rotting” (in Shivers in the Night), The Suicide Tree, #1 bestseller The 10 Commandments of Author Branding, and her book of poetry, All the Things I Should’ve Told You. In her not-so-free time, she acts as organizer for the Yukon Writers’ Society, studies all things true crime, and obsesses over squirrels. She lives in Oklahoma with her dogs, Chanel, Wednesday, and Baker.