Once I found my way back to consciousness I noticed the spelling. It cannot be a good sign when the title of the blog itself is horribly misspelled. I didn’t even want to reread the thing, knowing I’d be so disappointed in the way I’d mangled it. The blog was supposed to be about Dawn of Justice and it was, for a while. I wrote and wrote and, at some point, I realized that I was typing, my eyes were closed, and I was snoring.
Neat trick.
Rather than face the stream of unconsciousness on the page, I highlighted the whole mess and hit delete. Then I began again. Then I fell asleep again. And here we are.
The thing about creating a blog in this format is you are truly naked on the page. You are exposed and vulnerable without all of the nifty revision trickery that makes good writers into outstanding literary giants. Doing things the way I do not only forces me to write honestly and openly, but it builds up the protective tissues necessary to deal with public critique. Look, if I can come back to the page after yesterday then I can do anything. This is exactly the type of confidence I try to cultivate in my students as their teacher and often their alpha reader. I say be naked in front of me (I don’t actually say that. It would be very weird). I tell them not to fear what I will think about their work because it doesn’t really matter what anyone thinks about a first draft. That is the time to get it all out and on the page so that you have the words to work with. Sure, some–nay most–of it is night soil, but you can use that to grow a novel (shout out to Sol Stein) or a story or a career in what you truly love to do.
I truly love what I do, so much that I make it a habit in my life to share what I do with the world every day. Maybe there’s some ego involved in thinking I have something to share, but I’m proud of that ego. I’m proud to be a storyteller and proud of the occasional reader that picks up a book or blog and says, I really enjoyed the moments I spent with this writing.