A million unpublished drafts
Does everyone else fill pages and pages with words they don’t publish?
I love writing. I love it when the words pour out of my fingertips, condensing in tidy characters the shapes of feelings I haven’t figured out. I love it when the words come out all jumbled, and even when they feel just out of reach.
My love of writing has always been there. I’ve been writing stories since I can remember and I may, possibly, have more journals than Taylor Swift. I know how it works: the clumsy, giddy flow of the idea and the subsequent editing. I know I have to go back to the document, and read it and edit it and edit it again. Even if I hate it, especially if I hate it. I know this, and yet this year it’s been harder.
I had a very attainable goal of how many posts I wanted to publish this year, but the year doesn’t wait. Three months became six, became nine and my drafts are still waiting patiently in the pipeline. September sneaked up on me and made me realize, I barely wrote 7 posts this year.
Or rather… I’ve barely published 7 posts. I’m the conflicted owner of an overwhelming amount of half-written drafts. One day I look at them and love them and marvel that I could have any part in the selection of those words; the next… I find myself wondering what I could ever love about them. The truth is that most of them aren’t brilliant or brutally bad, they’re just unfinished.
The other day I spent some time going over my drafts and thought a few of them could work, but seeing them on the Medium editor, it felt like something was missing. Like the pen ran out of ink before I reached the end of the page. I still have not posted a single one of them. I will. Were there ever two more dangerous words? They put the mind at ease without actually accomplishing anything. Procrastination — thou heartless creature. The real snake in today’s garden of Eden. Where everything seems to be right at our fingertips, procrastination coils around willpower, whispering how tomorrow it will be easier, better, done. Determination disappears like a drop of dew on a bright red apple.
I go back to the drafts and look for the idea that led me to write them, and they seem to have solidified in weird shapes. I stand in front of them, chisel in hand, trying to find the figure/thought I originally had in mind.
I don’t know when perfectionism snuck back into my writing, or if it’s even that. Sometimes I fear I’m just pouring too much of myself into the day job. Maybe creativity dies after you write “leverages” too many times.
Either way here’s little old me with a million unpublished drafts wondering if everyone else also has that.
