There’s a trend that’s been happening over the past decade that surprised many—vinyl record sales shot up. They outpaced CD sales in 2020 and keep selling.
People dumped CDs to return to records or pick them up for the first time (Gen Z is the biggest buyer of vinyl). Why? Because digital music was too clean. It lacked personality. The compressed tracks lost depth and heart. The emotion got smushed too.
You see the same thing happening in digital media. Many movie studios are adding grain to their films (to mimic the quality of actual film) or adopting special lenses to add distortion (like the new digital lenses based on the historic Petzval lens, which adds distortion around the subject in a bokeh effect). The fact you can find the Bokeh effect in editing software programs tells you how popular this trend is these days.
These trends show a retreat from the sterile digital world that many feel has no soul to one that feels.
It’s a push toward emotion and humanity.
When art becomes too clean, it loses something tangible—that texture that draws us in and gives the work depth.
It’s why tube amps sound better than solid state (okay, yes, this is a widely debated argument amongst audiophiles, but I have taken a clear side here). Tube amplifiers add warmth and depth to the sound. Just like hearing the popping of a record playing brings the music to life more than the super clean digital versions do.
In the past year, this issue has crashed into the writing world. AI-assisted writing often exhibits the same issue of being too clean and sterile. Even when it makes mistakes, they are predictable and obvious.
But AI is not the only issue in writing too clean. There are two other ways to pull the life out of your writing—perfectionism and over-editing.
Let’s tackle them one at a time:
Perfectionism
We all want our work to be perfect. To match that vision we see in our head. But the sad truth is it never will. No matter how much we try, we will never reach that level of perfection. It’s a lie that torments every artist out there, no matter their medium.
Humans are flawed. Our work is flawed too. That is part of what makes it human.
No one expects perfection, outside of the artist herself.
That’s what we need to steer clear of in writing (and any art form). Do your best. Get the words on the page. Refine them through editing. But let the work breathe. Let it be human.
Too many writers these days are relying on AI to assist them in drafting, writing, and perfecting their work. Grammar programs analyze every word and make suggestions to make it perfect or better.
That’s fine. If you stay in control and choose when to accept their edit and when to stick to your artistic vision. The ignore feature is there for a reason.
This obsession with being perfect leads to the second problem that makes your work too clean.
Over-Editing
Even without AI grammar programs, it is easy to fall into the trap of editing your work again and again. To strive for that perfect piece of writing. But it’s a myth and dangerous.
Over-editing can strip all the life out of your writing. All the quirky details that make your reader smile. The rhythms that pull them along. The cadence of ideas. The heartbeat of your story.
Limit your editing to correcting the obvious issues—the subject-verb disagreements, the tense changes, the POV changes (point of view), broken story logic, missing throughline, and more. But don’t try to make it too clean.
Leave the quirks and music in your writing. Let it breathe.
When you try to be right, you risk being boring.
Don’t try to sound like everyone else or like a grammar book. Be you. Let your voice come through. Write messy. Clean up the errors, but leave the life. Don’t go too clean.