Jan 23
I Need to Write a Bad Post
Forgive me, readers, I think it’s part of the process
This is not a writer’s block type thing. There are plenty of ideas swimming around in my head, bumping against each other like a drunken school of fish. Perhaps that is the problem or the trigger: not the lack of inspiration that often has us staring at a white page, but rather the dizziness that stems from switching between one half-written idea and the next.
No seashells on the grass
I find myself needing to write a bad post to get it out of the way. Lately, when I read my drafts, they are all missing something, often a sense of direction. I run with the idea, and about halfway through I’m unsure which way to take it. So I keep writing and not publishing. Writing and cringing, editing and cringing, rereading and re-cringing. And I’m not a particularly lazy person, but I don’t want to be forever editing them.
Sometimes we edit and find the diamond in the rough, and sometimes we edit and it turns into a completely different thing: like finding a seashell in the grass or a message in a bottle lodged in a tree trunk. Other times, we trim, hack, collage, only to gaze upon the frankenstory and cringe.
Like cleaning the coffee maker
I find myself needing to write a bad post to get it out of the way. I have this crazy feeling that if I just let myself write it and get it out of my system, throw in all my missteps and question marks and let them stick to the page, maybe it’ll free me to start over fresh with whatever comes next. A little bit like running water through the coffee maker a few times to wash it out: it looks like it is making coffee and sounds like it’s making coffee, but it’s just dirty water in the mug. Still, it’s necessary for the good coffee-brewing process.
And yet, it’s the strangest thing because even as I set out to write a bad post and let it be bad, I am sifting through the drawer of literary devices, pulling similes to illustrate and justify, I am editing the typos and reviewing the grammar. I am not simply sitting here letting the words walk onto the page just like that. Maybe I’m still hoping some fragment of this resonates with whoever is reading this on the other side.
I love writing, even when it’s most frustrating. I love-hate getting ideas at inconvenient times, I love-hate getting so caught up in the story I don’t realize when I switch from third person to first or vice versa, and the very challenging exercise of having to edit those random switches after. I love writing, and I want my writing to be good. Whether it’s posts, poems, or the novels I’m working on, I review the writing, read it out loud, run it through Grammarly, get feedback and edit it again to try and make it the best it can be.
So when I say I find myself needing to write a bad post, it’s not that I purposely set out to waste your time. I’m not sitting here giggling with glee as I imagine readers on the other side rolling their eyes. And I thought about writing this and just letting it go to the drafts folder. I did. But that’s not how spring cleaning works, even the mental ones. You don’t take the clothes from the drawer and stuff them in a bag at the back of the wardrobe, or take the books you didn’t like and put them in a box under the table. I also thought about writing and deleting it, but that hasn’t been working either.
So here I am, writing and sharing this post which has a lot of words but doesn’t say a lot, and has a higher count of the word “like” than I’d like and will likely not get a lot of views or claps.
