Writing About Writing

I never know where to get started when writing blog posts. A friend of mine once told me that getting started is the hardest part of writing. I agree with her at the moment, but not all of the time. Writing in my journal at home is easy. Getting started never really happens; I just sort of let my mind and pen vomit all over the clean white pages in front of me. I’m free to write my thoughts, my feelings, and my opinions in messy handwriting and poor grammar without having to worry about anyone reading it and confirming that, yes, I am a little bit of a lunatic. Writing in a blog, however, is profoundly different. OK, so it isn’t really that profound. There’s just something inhibiting about knowing that a few people actually take a look at this thing from time to time.

I once had a professor tell me to just sit down at the computer and start writing. “Write whatever comes to mind,” he said. “You can always hit the delete button later.” (Of course, his endearing advice didn’t stop him from scrawling red ink all over my midterm paper.) Anne Lamott maintains the same idea in her book “Bird by Bird”. She states over and over again that everyone is allowed a “shitty first draft”. The point is simply to write; to let the words and creativity flow freely onto the page without any restrictions. You can always edit it later.

I’m not a good writer. That or I’m not a good editor. I don’t edit my own work, so I guess I could be a little—or a lot—of both. But I love to write. It is a sweet release of all the things going on inside of me… and there are a ton of things going on inside of me. Just like a lot of people, I have a heavy past that I both regret and appreciate all at the same time. It has made me who I am today: a conflicted human being. Yes, I’m conflicted, as my closest friends will readily tell you. And as conflict usually goes, it requires a lot of thought and there’s always an overabundance of emotion involved. There are some days when I feel like my head is going to explode, and it’s on days like these that I go into my room, shut the door, and fall on my knees… to pray? Yes, sometimes. But sometimes my thoughts take over my prayers, and that’s when my journal comes in to play. I really believe that God gave me the desire to write. My thoughts and my words are less than articulate, but it all comes out on the page. Sometimes it’s eloquent, most of the time it isn’t. But the point is, it's out there. It is no longer trapped inside of my head.

So today, I took my professor’s advice: I just sat down and started writing whatever came to mind at that particular moment. There are a lot of things on my mind, but I zeroed in on the topic of writing for some reason. It’s funny where your mind and fingers can take you when they collaborate. I had absolutely no intention of writing about writing when I logged in, but that’s precisely what came out of me. It’s a “shitty first draft” that I will share with the blogging world without giving it a chance at a second draft. Why? Because I don’t have time… and I’m practicing writing without any inhibitions.