The pain of writing
When I work with my hands, like on a woodworking or home improvement project, I have moments of frustration, but most of the experience is joy. There are small incremental improvement all leading to the end of the project.
But when I write, I write in loops, and it always hurts.
I write something small, “no that’s not it”, delete. Write again, “ok that’s good, let’s keep it.” Write again, different part sounded good. New version, “this one is the worse. Crap, it’s the same as the version I kinda liked. Guess I’m throwing that out too."
Again and again. I rewrite the same piece ten times, finding fragments of the final version, but they clash and don’t fit into a coherent whole. You can move them around, but I can never copy/paste my way there. And there's still something I can't articulate that hasn’t shown up in a single version.
I start again. Write on paper, write in Notes, say it out loud, write like I’m writing to a friend. It’s getting worse.
One Chrome tab away, ChatGPT whispers "How can I help you today?" The escape hatch is unbearably tempting.
But if I know one thing, it’s that I can’t give away the one piece of my work that I love.
If I keep banging my head against this, eventually it will all happen in a single instant. The piece will take shape. I’ll think “oh, I can write the whole thing right now”, and it will just pour onto the page in a moment. It will happen straight-through, with the clarity of transcribing something already completed.
When it’s done, I won’t feel much attachment to it. I won't feel the pride that I would if I'd built a shelf or fixed a sprinkler. I'll just be thankful that’s over, but with the sense that any half decent writer would have gotten here sooner.
In a few months, I’ll re-read it as if it was something somebody else wrote. Certain sentences or turns of phrase will strike me as beautiful. I’ll laugh at a joke that I forgot and think “oh, I should write more.”
This can't be how everybody else is writing. There has to be a better way. But at almost 40 years old, it's the only method that has ever worked for me. Write it once. Write it again. Write it over and over until I think "Oh, thank God this is done."