On Writing

[An unedited personal essay on the frustration of writing, which I wrote Feb. 17th and have been waiting to post until I ‘edited’ it...which is quite sad/laughable considering the theme of the essay...siiiiigh]
 
I paralyze myself with thinking “who’s going to read this, what are they going to think?”
 
I need to just write. I need to stop worrying about sounding clever or getting the right idiom or who’s going to think I sound smart or pretentious using this word. I need to just get it out of my head.
 
I’m paralyzed by past teachers who used to praise me for writing what they wanted. (which was generally middle of the road sentimental average sludge.) It was really well-written sludge, but it was boring and overly-sentimental as probably all middle school English teachers think a polite, smallish twelve year old should sound. I find myself wanting to find the moral in every story and wrap it all up in a nice little package. It’s hard not to censor myself as I write...to allow myself to write in an authentic meghan voice instead of the meghan I’ve concocted to please the writing audience I’ve imagined in my head...and the real one grading my papers in English classes.
 
I have to write as fast as I possibly can to avoid thinking myself into a bad place. I have to write faster than I can censor myself. It’s like the authentic meghan voice is racing against teacher-pet perfectionist meghan and if my hands can type fast enough, maybe authentic meghan can beat stupid-perfectionist meghan and then I can actually have something interesting to work with.
 
The feeling of “not knowing” is just generally uncomfortable for me...not that I don’t love it. I love finding a new topic to explore...but I feel this crazy uncomfortable pressure to learn about it as quickly as possible so I can start knowing how to talk about it and how I feel about it.
 
This effect probably comes out of my interest in politics and social justice and my stints on various debate teams. I was on three at the same time in high school: National Forensics League (has nothing to do with dead people...I don’t know why it’s called that), Harvard model congress, and Model UN. Girls are still in the minority on those teams, and I relished kicking the boys’ butts. My team used to practice for 6 hours every Sunday until we could make a sound argument in our sleep. But a side effect is that now making casual observations and feeling things out is really hard. My brain is wired to write in normative statements.
 
And right now that’s how I feel. Out of my element. It’s all new and fascinating territory. I feel this enormous amount of pressure to know EVERYTHING about the subjects I’ve laid out for myself...a feeling I’ve learned to kick to the curb in my other design projects (most of the time) but something I still struggle with in my writing courses. I have this desire to know everything there is to know about something before I begin so that I can make the absolute best piece of writing possible--especially if it’s a rhetorical piece. I want my arguments to be so tight that I’ve thought out every possible rebuttal and covered it. Of course this is an impossible and really annoying place to live in. Not to say that perfectionism doesn’t have its place. But it does NOT have a place in writing first drafts. It’s impossible to write a ‘perfect’ first draft and it’s impossible to know everything about something before I’ve explored it through writing/sketching/getting feedback about it. And this blog it supposed to be a place for me to explore topics and get feedback. So...I need to chill out and realize I’m not on debate team anymore. And also this is supposed to be fun. The biggest impediment to my own success is my own worry ABOUT that potential success and what other people will think about it/me after I put myself out there to be judged. Which is such a ridiculously juvenile thing for a 24-year old to worry about. So I need to chill out and stop worrying and just have fun with the material. As someone wise told me last year during a similar personal freakout, “If you have fun with the work, the outcome will take care of itself.”