A friend who's read my past writings told me to think about writing again. I told her, no, no one would read it. She said two people would. But since I really like her, I made an effort to think about it.
My solution: buy a notebook to write down thoughts about writing. Anne Lamount in Bird by Bird said this changed her writing life.
I really was coming up with lots of ideas I thought; I needed that notebook pronto! So I went out to the store and bought one for two dollars.
My mind must be playing tricks on me: Now that it knows I have this notebook with me always, it refuses to give me good writing ideas. Like it's frightened of more work or something.
Well, to be fair, my mind is fine—I just fail to write things down quickly. I think fear gets to me. I can't get out of my head that writing poetry (what I used to love) is just sheer emotionalism with good theology traded in for a good sentence or two.
But it hit me at some point to think about memories with friends and as a kid—where amazment at how things simply are was normal. I think I want to write about that, and to praise God for making it all! What a great goal.
Now, for actually sitting down and doing it, I'm not sure how that will work. I feel like I just don't like staring at paper. I'm realizing more that I sometimes don't trust myself to not go overboard with writing fluffy-ness. I need to be nicer to myself. But how do I start?
Oh, letting go of perfectionism is never ease. I'm still a recovering perfectionist.
