why the writing, all of a sudden?

© amy pang

I'm terribly undisciplined when it comes to my personal writing. I get excited by an idea, fall into a pattern of diligently authoring carefully crafted pieces and posts, and abandon the enterprise altogether when my time and energy are needed elsewhere.

Writing something every day is daunting. There are days when I don't have much to say, or I struggle with the words. Sometimes I read something that I've dashed off, and I think, "Ugh. How banal."

Then there are times, like this season, when I'm feeling restless and need to create. And I'm approaching this literary fecundity with the idea that I should stop worrying about the 'carefully crafted' part. Good grammar and spelling are still important, of course. But I don't need to mess around with finding the most artful way to say something; it will keep me from breaking out of my self-imposed hamster ball. I'm trapped within my own relentless need for perfection.

As my boss is fond of saying, "Perfect is the enemy of good."

I had lunch with a friend, who also writes and is a photographer, the other day, and I mentioned that I blog for myself and have one hosted on HuffPo that I've sadly neglected for nearly a year. I had plenty of excuses: no time, no ideas, no recurring themes.

To paraphrase his response: be yourself. Write. You don't need themes; those become stale.

You can't run a marathon well without training. My scratchings here are my boot camp.