I reference this video of writer Ta-Nehisi Coates so often that I want to share the link here. About 1.5. minutes in, he starts talking about the difference between “that perfect thing that was in my head” and what actually ends up on the page. If what you end up with is just 70% as good as that perfect that thing was in your head, he says, then you’ve done your job.
I share this a lot because beating yourself up over not getting your writing done takes time and energy. It’s easy to get into the ‘why bother’ cycle, as in, I’m not managing to do this like I’m supposed to be doing it, so why bother at all? Carrying around the weight of angry voices, listening them to the constant hum of their reprimands, does not make your writing any easier. If anything, the opposite.
What Coates suggests, I think, is the possibility of giving yourself permission to be imperfect. Accepting that there is, and likely always will be, a gap between what you envision and what you actually produce. That when your ideas on paper end up just a little less bright and shiny than they are in your head, this is not a sign of having failed. That this is the process — to create an approximation of the ideal. You do that, and your job is done.