I Don’t Want My Writings to be Perfect Anymore
Currently, my writing process is like this:
- The idea struck lightning inside my head
- Mentally writing the sentences until I’m doing something else or asleep
- Writes down what I can remember in any writing platform — Google Docs, Medium, Write.as, Notion, etc.
- Finding problems with my sentences
- Going back and forth fixing something that’s neither wrong nor right
- Stuck — doesn’t know what to write anymore
- Perpetually stressed out over writing and rewriting and not writing at all
- The drafts stayed as drafts for years
I am always jealous of my middle-school self. I had my first personal laptop. I could write what I want without feeling ashamed or any fear of being watched by my family. My fingers would type without any care in the world, not afraid of any typos and grammatical errors. I just wanted to write and write and write.
Then, I became afraid of failure.
I grew up trying to be a straight-A student, to be a smart daughter that her mother can proudly show off, even though I eventually betrayed her expectations — not in terms of grade, but in my life choices and my negligence.
Eventually, this affected my writing process.
My word choices became so flowery, I don’t even know how to describe a place anymore. I hated having typos to the point I erased a whole paragraph and barely remembered how I wrote them in the first place. My ideas became too grand for someone who always has a hard time reaching two thousand words.
I just don’t write for a long, long time.
No.
I still write. I just never dare to publish anymore.
So, I’m creating this publication. Learning to finish any ideas that I have in one go, regularly, responsibly.
I don’t know how it’d look like in the future. A diary, perhaps. Musings of self-deprecation and wonder. A messy mosaic of words.
Still, I’d rather have that than having these rigid fingers and synapses not knowing what to write, not knowing what to share, not knowing what to do.
So, here I am, trying to erase that perfection.
I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.
The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
