To my loyal readers out there (no one, mostly intentionally), I am so sorry for this inadvertent hiatus I took. I told you I would be writing longer posts and posting weekly instead of daily, and I, clearly, miserably failed at that. I’ve been keenly aware of that fact since the very week in which I failed to post. And though it bothered me, though it confused me, though it aggravated me, it did none of those things enough to make me actually sit down and write what I said I would write.
Why?
I am not sure.
I found the daily writing I did in June to be so easy to keep up with. Exceedingly easy, actually, which shocked me. A handful of paragraphs were fun to type out, even if I had no idea what to write going into it. Something about sitting down and just…seeing what came from my brain was really fun. It felt low-stakes, too, in a way that felt accessible given that I also work full time and have all the other normal adult responsibilities on top of that. But something about writing something longer and doing so with enough intention to draft it, edit, draft again, edit again, and so on through the whole cycle…it was too much. It overwhelmed me very, very quickly, and I couldn’t stick with it.
Obviously, I would like to stick with it. That is the dream, after all—to be able to sit down and write what I want, longer pieces and shorter pieces and flash fiction whole novels and short stories maybe, too. I want to be able to do those interchangeably, with as much ease as those challenges allow. I would love to not feel like some facet of my brain that I can’t comprehend is what stands between me and doing that.
I wonder if it is the idea of editing that stops me. Stream-of-consciousness, raw, off the cuff words feel so much easier to me right now. The idea of sitting down to extensively edit may be draining me of all motivation before I’ve even realized I’m thinking of it. Editing, that oh-so-necessary-bane-of-my-existence-absolutely-vital-piece-of-the-writing-process. It is what takes a good piece of work and turns it into a great one. It’s what helps you refine your own thinking and your own opinions. It’s so much of what makes writing interesting. Having someone else to read your work and help you with it and then talk to you about it is so much of what makes literature fun.
Yet, when confronted with self-imposed rules of needing to edit my work before I post, I balk. It’s not that I don’t edit these simple posts over before I publish, but I don’t demand much from myself with that process and don’t put too much extenuating force into those edits. I read it over, sometimes I switch paragraphs around, I change words here and there, I expand on ideas that interest me on the re-reads. But I don’t spend hours or days on that process, it’s more of a minutes sort of thing.
I can justify that, I think, because I expect nothing from these short passages. I don’t expect them to be expansive. I don’t expect them to sum up an entire story or a great Thought about life. I do not need them to be particularly good. I need them to be regular, I need them to be interesting to me, and I need them to be a little practice at flexing my writing muscles. The demands are low, which make them easy for me, which makes it fun.
To raise those stakes in the particular directions that I have seem to take a lot of the fun out of it for me. It drains me before I even have the chance to begin, especially when there is also work, exercise, cooking, cleaning, and relationships to keep up with. I am busy, I have come to accept about myself, and some types of writing fit well into the gaps I have, and some don’t. Right now, writing and rewriting and writing and rewriting the same blog post to perfection isn’t one that fits well into those gaps. Short passages every day, however, do.
There are times when I can push myself to do something I don’t want to do, and there are times when I need to work with myself given the thing I don’t want to do. There is a difference for me, I’ve learned between lacking motivation and having another block that prevents progress. I can override a lack of motivation with my abundance of discipline, but sometimes, pushing forward with discipline overrides something that does not allow for true progress forward. Maybe I get a week of going to the gym amidst chronic fatigue, or I get a week or two of longer content published, but I am fighting against a stronger tide that will push me back with a vengence. It isn’t simply a lack of motivation stopping me, there is some force greater that is getting in my way. And I don’t always know what that force is, but no amount of stiff arming it gets me where I need to go. I need to listen to what my body and my brain tell me. Sometimes that means taking a break from the gym until I feel more recharged. Sometimes that means going back to writing short passages and skipping out on the bulk of editing.
It is okay to work with myself, to meet myself where I am. This life my first time being me, after all, and that comes with learning the ins and outs of how I work. The way I work isn’t always the way I want it to be at the times I want it to be, but that gets to be okay. I get to meet myself where I am, reassess what is going on, and try a new path forward.
I plan to write something every day in September. Here, it will be stream-of-consciousness, and similar to what I did in June. It is a time-capsule for me of what this year (and particular months, especially) was for me. Sanitized and filtered, in some ways, since I am still aware I am posting these to the internet, but the flexing of my writing muscles, a little bit of fun, and a new trial of how to get myself consistent with the kinds of projects I want to be working on.
