Itchy.

Today I awakened with an itchy throat. I wanted to reach down and scratch it with my overgrown fingernails. Didn't bode well for the day. "If I lay heeeere, if I just lay here..."

Last night I downloaded Allison Vesterfelt's freshly released e-book, Writing To Find Yourself, because of course I need yet another thing to tell me how to do something before I bother trying. Perfectionist. You know this. Anyway, the e-book is an adorable little thing--only one hundred pages. I wanted to read it all in one go, but it was late and I was tired so I stopped on page fifty-five. This is unimportant and I am stalling. It's part of the exercise.

Anyway, the only thing that made me forget about wanting to remove my throat was my excitement about getting to finish Allison's book. The first half was eerily relevant and encouraging, giving me things to work on instead of providing a security blanket for my excuses and bad habits. I was stoked to finish it thinking, "Holy coconuts, I think I'm going to write something after this!" And then I noticed something, yet another thing to hide behind: after this. As in, after I finish reading about how to do this thing as perfectly as possible even though the entirety of what I've read so far is about NOT striving for perfection and instead allowing room for error/growth/allowing yourself to be where you are in order to discover what needs adjustment. So, instead of finishing the book, I stopped (with brute force) on page eighty and decided to tackle what I found to be the hardest challenge yet addressed: "write now, edit later." UM, WHAT. That is completely foreign language as someone who only ever edits as she goes. I don't even know what a draft is. Actually wait, it's that thing where I spend ten years "waiting" to say stuff and then when it finally comes out it's like the ends of the bread that no one ate that you pull from the back of the fridge half-frozen, blue, and disturbingly fuzzy (if you do eat those, comment below--in their fresh state, obviously), and then no one ever wants to see the insides of that fridge again... But I digress.

Write now, edit later. I had to sit and make that mean something to me. Even writing this, I've been careful and even cheated and deleted/added a couple of things. Just for that, I, when I've finished this, have to post it as-is. I don't get to edit later because I cheated. Self-inflicted punishment. That line I wanted to add back up at the top in between "...bother trying" and "Perfectionist"? Nope. You'll never know what it was. You may be wondering whether or not I am being serious--I am. It is ri-di-cu-lous that I have to (choose to) treat myself this way. But until I get more comfortable with being uncomfortable, that's how it's going to be. Don't worry, you don't have to understand. Although, something tells me that a lot of you do.

After I finish Allison's wonderful, Godsend of an e-book, I'm going to tell everyone to download it, and then I'm going to read it again and take notes. What a truly invaluable work that applies to so much more than just writing. Like, I'm considering using the whole of chapter six to patch some cigarette burns in my tapestry, so to speak. There is so much more to say about it--I mean heck, if this mini-book moved me to post on my crusty, dusty, crypt of a "blog," imagine what it'll do for less abnormal people?!

Well done, Allison. Thank you for turning a day that began with an itchy throat into a day of first steps toward betterment. Maybe it won't be a year before I post here again.


~mm~