I skipped yesterday because I had a little meltdown. I want to be honest – I hate that I’m doing this.
^ That was yesterday, actually. I wrote those two sentences and skipped another day. No meltdown this time, just a deep weariness looking at the screen. Instead of finishing the thought I watched three episodes of the Crown, a show I don’t even particularly care about, which is to say nothing about the Crown, just a general feeling about most tv these days where I wonder: is this my life? Watching television, and getting better at it? Practicing every night so I can… watch it even better the next time? I digress.
The truth is, I don’t know why I’m blogging. A friend called the day before yesterday to talk to me about an earlier post and I nearly lost my mind with panic at the thought that someone had actually read any of it. I broke down into hysterical sobs at the idea that someone had seen my thoughts before I could know what they’re about, before I know what my voice is or what I want to write about or who I even am in this format. And so I had a big cry on the phone and he patiently listened and then told me, “well… why don’t you write about that?”
So before I go any further with this project, a project I never really articulated the rules of because I tend to be a little too precious about rules and prioritize figuring them out and perfecting them, often to the detriment of action, I want to think through a little of what I’m doing here. I mean what the hell I am actually, really doing here. (?) (!)
First I’ll say whenever I have thought about starting a blog or a newsletter or some other sort of low-friction routine online writing, a series of internal arguments begin, usually hinging on these quotes:
First, Rebecca Solnit, in her tips on writing: “Write what you most passionately want to write, not blogs, posts, tweets or all the disposable bubblewrap in which modern life is cushioned.” A kind of noble, anti-crap stance.
But then, Ira Glass, on how to move through the “taste gap” in the early stages of making creative work: “the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work — do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week, or every month, you know you’re going to finish one story. Because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions. It takes a while, it’s gonna take you a while — it’s normal to take a while. And you just have to fight your way through that, okay?”
And then there was Jiayang Fan on the Longform podcast not too long ago saying “the world deserves to know the quality of your uncertainty” and “write into your self doubt.” Which was advice perhaps not intend for me, a person who the world has given much more than it has taken away, but still hit deep in my chest.
And more personally, my friend Sheycha (who is in fact a working artist, her link to come when I get an updated one) telling me that much of art and breaking through creative blocks is about “imperfect action.”
Not to mention, I used to be paid at least in part to tell fledgling podcasters that they couldn’t wait until they have the perfect idea; they just had to start making things and mess around and iterate. That they wouldn’t know what their podcasts were really about until they started making them. Sometimes, you just have to start.
I’d long fallen on the Only Make Good Art side of the argument, certain that any sort of casual online writing would steal my focus from the longer term writing projects and questions, the things that mattered most to me. But then this year, way back in the late summer, when I was in Paris and feeling especially observant and curious and maybe even a little witty, I thought it might be nice to start something structured, in the vein of Suleika Jaouad’s advice to dedicate 100 days to a project. Something with clear rules to help rein in the part of me that is so uncertain, so wishy-washy, so unlikely to let go of something until I’ve perfected it. It was meant to be an antidote to my dozens of journals full of early drafts that never saw readers. For years now I have been trying to commit myself to an ideology of act first, think later. Not because I don’t value thinking, but because I prefer to think about something for years, maybe literal decades before I affix myself to a viewpoint. I wrote a cheeky little post called “The Rules” that held myself to 250 words every day but Sunday, because the French like to keep their Sundays sacred and I thought I might too. It felt so breezy, so fun – 250 words! I was going to museums practically every day, eating good food, reading great books. Surely I could pull 250 words out of nowhere every day. I wrote the first day, told someone about it, and then promptly stopped writing.
This has been a life pattern. The minute I tell someone what I’m working on, it drifts off into nothingness. For a while I thought it was because speaking something out loud would diminish the necessary creative tension to get things out, and I do still think that’s true to a point. Sometimes an idea needs to sit, itchy and restless inside of me until I can coax it out. But I think my fear of sharing was much more about keeping myself blissfully unaccountable to anyone. It’s such a boring story. It’s exactly what they say about any creative work. But it’s still true, and it still aches in its way. Someone might want to read my short story? Well then, it will fossilize as a draft, something for me to reference to uninvested strangers as evidence that I actually do write in my spare time.
Inspired by another friend who started a newsletter, I decided to start up again impulsively, this time with a 10! Day! Blazingly-Paced! content generation scheme, where I would post and post and post until I had sandblasted through my own insecurities and learned something about writing in public. “Public” being practically no one because I didn’t tell anyone about the plan. It was a nice secret plan that promptly imploded when someone found out about it, but was already feeling doomed because of the knots even just three silly posts had threaded deep in my gut.
So, candidly, here are my fears about writing this way, or maybe about writing, period: I’m afraid that I don’t know what I think. I’m afraid that I don’t have a voice or a perspective. I’m afraid that what I write might hurt someone inadvertently, or sound foolish, or reveal a kind of lazy thinking, or for that matter reveal any number of unflattering personality traits not limited to: my narcissism, my desire to dazzle, my need to be liked, my tendency toward meaningless artifice and flourish, my general fondness for 10-cent words, my arrogance, my generalist’s habit of playing fast and loose with facts… the list goes on.
I’m afraid I won’t have permission to grow in public, from the people I share this with or even from myself. That I’ll sound too much like the writing I hate and not enough like the writing I like. That I’ll fart around writing the things that don’t really matter to me or to anyone. I feel this even more acutely because it is so possible in this exact moment to have a transactional relationship with every thought and turn it into a tweet, a post, an essay, a video, etc. etc. etc. I think of that Rebecca Solnit quote again and I just want to cringe – am I just adding bubblewrap? There is so much writing now. There is so much good writing, and there is also so much filler, and sometimes it can feel like the goal of even the most thrilling creative enterprises today is to get us all to spend as much of our time as possible reading/watching/listening to/thinking about other people. To be hooked in to other things vying for our attention instead of sitting deeply in our own lives. If I’m going to contribute to the tsunami of Content or even just the growing pool of thoughts, I want to do so with something meaningful. Though actually, the first word I wanted to write was “neat.” So, meaningful and maybe also neat. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In some ways I know this post is itself a sort of screaming disclaimer, anticipating criticism and saying “see! anything you’ve thought about me, I’ve already thought about myself!” But more than that, I wanted to free myself to write this all out, as a kind of mission statement or manifesto, to set some parameters and release the demons. In fact, while I’m at it, here are some rules for myself:
I choose learning over achievement. This is a learning process. I am hoping that by writing a lot, and about many different things, I will learn what I like to write about in public – where I feel resistance, where things flow, what feels fun and what feels like a chore.
I reserve the right to revise. I’ll acknowledge where I do so, but I don’t want to be so wedded to my own ideas that I am unwilling to scrutinize them or change them in future.
I also reserve the right to experiment. With genre, topic, form, length, cadence, etc.
I get to write through and past my embarrassment. I want my words to do justice to my thoughts and the thoughts of people I am responding to. I accept that inevitably I am going to write something I look back on with true, palm-sweating horror. This is usually where I’ve stopped in past. Every newsletter I have ever written has arrived at some horrifying, self-indulgent, overwrought essay where I tried to do too much. I accept now that will happen and I just have to keep going, and maybe I don’t have to wear it as some miserable badge of dishonor saying “I can’t actually write.”
Oh, and: I will post by 9pm. Ideally even earlier. No late night spirals hunched over my laptop, burning in the blue glare and hating myself. For my own wellbeing, what I post here is not going to get in the way of my pajama time.
So, for the next 7 days, I will be posting every day and seeing what happens. When the ten days are over, I’ll reflect how it went and decide if I want to try to keep going for 30 (whoahohoHO! Is the world ready?!) or switch to an essay-once-a-week kind of deal.
Thank you for reading this, if you did. It’s the usual writers-agonizing-about-writing kind of thing that I hate to contribute to the total word count of, but I needed to say it and just exhale. And with that said, here we go.
1903 words (hilarious), Day 3.5/10
Ana Olson 