I’m going back pre blog tonight to a time where writing was the only thing that I felt I really controlled and understood in my life. I was young—maybe 12. It was right after my dad died and the words were really all I had. My mom wasn’t a fan of the sports I was in. I think she put me in them to keep me busy and never cared about my talent level. I played for myself and when I wasn’t playing I was writing. Today I put down 600 words in an hour. Back then it was closer to two thousand and it was entirely handwritten.
I wrote like a demon was in the words. It was unworried writing. Ir was writing that didn’t care what anyone thought. I knew I had stories that had to leave me and I did everything I could to get it down on paper. I miss it. I believe that is how everyone ought to construct a draft or should I say consume a draft because you’re taking something out of the story world and moving it to our own. Today felt a little that way. There were fits and starts of me looking things up to get it exactly right but I’ll train myself out of that. Worries about accuracy are for the pre writing and the revising. The first draft ought to be raw and energetic and come from a place that is at once yourself and outside yourself. I knew this as a kid but as an adult I became consumed with what a reader would say about the draft they never saw. What a foolish thing to worry oneself about.
there are clearly times during the ten minutes I spend here that I fall back into that world and that mold. Mostly it comes in the forms of rants and reviews and discussions about things that end up sounding like rants because I am venting. Of course venting is what writing the first draft ought to feel like. You release all of that story stuck inside of you in order to create a moment of peace when it is finished.
these stories we create matter —if to nobody else but ourselves and it is our responsibility to let them come as they are and clean them up when they are fully formed. I don’t know how to do that anymore but I am learning again.