#writerproblems

You would think I'd have done better on my Writing SAT II.  Or on the writing section of my GRE.  Or on any of the papers I wrote in college...even with professor feedback.

The thing is, I wasn't trained to write papers.  I was trained to write art.

For the three years between when I got my braces off and when I left for college, I was enrolled in a conservatory-style half-day writing program in the city.  Those years were often painful, if I let myself admit it.  Bus rides reading bizarre poetry, weekends spent with novels, years of teenage angst filling notebooks like a boat taking on too much water.  My memories of those years are as dim as the unlit classrooms we sat in, their long tables creating uncomfortable spaces between us, the harsh afternoon sun bleaching our vision between clouds, between classes.  But unlike my normal, fluorescent-lit high school, where I spent my mornings learning calculus and envying cool kids, a piece of me loved it, and I would go back, if I had the chance.  I would do it again.  Because those daily hours of reading and discussing and writing and revising and critiquing, they made me a better writer.  And good writing, it's more than just words on a page.  It's freedom in places and times you feel entrapped.  It's conflict in the more tepid corners of life.  It soothes, it stretches, it challenges.

Of course, it's not perfect.  It has, in some ways, made my life harder.  Creative types aren't usually responsible, so finding a boyfriend who likes to read books and keep a steady job is a tall order.  We aren't usually early to bed, either, so forcing myself to get to sleep on time is rough.  And everything I write takes ten times as long as it should.  Monday, I sent an email out to a parent, and I spent more than five minutes writing, reading, re-writing, and re-reading three sentences before finally clicking send.  And at the end, I found myself trying to justify, but regretting the time lost.  Did the email say exactly what I wanted to say, in exactly the tone of voice I was hoping for?  Yes.  Did I leave work before 6pm?  No.

I started writing this at 7:45pm.  It is now 9:30, and I'm midway through my tenth or twelfth revision.  Not even done yet.  So much for reading part of that library book I just started, or properly feeding myself.

The great poet William Carlos Williams once said exactly what I think every time this happens:
"I think all writing is a disease.  You can't stop it."

It has probably felt like a disease to anyone with whom I've ever written anything, too.  My college roommate likes to joke about the time we wrote a paper together...and how painful it was.  She has a very different approach to writing: get it all out in an hour, read over it quickly, make a few edits, and then put a fork in it.  Her process sounds lazy to me--because if I did that, it'd be out of laziness--but nothing she ever puts to paper is poorly written.  In fact, in college, she usually made a better grade on her papers than I did.  Because while I was busy nitpicking for the exact right word and phrasing, she was busy making a stronger point.

The words, though...they haunt me.  There are points at which I feel like I've forgotten huge chunks of the English language, and I sit in front of the computer, eyes glazed over, mind grasping for that perfect word.  It's usually a word that I know that I know, but it's out of reach, hiding somewhere in the recesses of my neural grid.  It's like a painfully slow game of capture the flag.  Sometimes I find my way to it, sometimes it defeats me first.

More and more, I consider letting go of this obsessive approach to writing and letting what comes out early on be "good enough," whittling down my revision time and accepting imperfections for what they are: reality.  I know my therapist would be proud of me, for cutting myself some slack.  But since when has art ever been about slack?  And how do you let go, when the intricacy of the process creates something so beautiful, so satisfying?

I suppose you don't.