The other night, a lightbulb came on for me, about writing.

It’s about fear. Facing the page is about facing fear. Which is about facing what I’m scared of: failure. Because the fear of failure on the page is all about being “not good enough,” and “making mistakes,” and “saying something someone might not like,” and “being a poor writer.”

But …

Writing is about making mistakes. Writing is about drafts and revisions and corrections and incubation and not being perfect the first time. Writing is about writing – doing it, and worrying about the rest later. Writing is about getting the ideas onto the page; catching the words and putting them onto the page … in an imperfect way. In fact, writing *cannot* be perfect the first time. It’s impossible! No one writes that way. No one. Not even [insert revered writer name here].

Therefore …

To write, one must make mistakes and accept that one will make mistakes. To write, one must take the leap and just do it, and think about the revisions and edits and grammar and sentence structure and rhetoric later. To write, one must know that one is not perfect, that one is never going to be perfect, and one must put the act of writing before one’s insecurities and worries about being imperfect.

So…

Writing is like life. Messy, unpredictable, imperfect, needing revisions.

And who am I to think that somehow I could escape the fate of all writers, which deems us to become slaves to the craft? Because it is, in fact, a craft, which takes years and years to hone and shape and foster.

Some writers will never work hard or long enough that they will actually become good writers. I will be very lucky if I do. Some people work their entire lives to become good writers. What makes me think that somehow I can’t publish a blog post on WordPress because it’s not perfect the first time? It’s ridiculous.

Ultimately, facing the page is about facing fear, which is about accepting my own limitations and imperfections, and knowing that no one in the world writes something perfectly the first time, and I will not either. So I shouldn’t let the fear of imperfection stop me, because that is what prevents me from starting to write. And I must start to write if I am going to make a go at this challenging craft. Furthermore, if I really want this — if I really, really want this — I’d better get started, because I might not even be able to get to where I want to go before my life is over.

So, the lightbulb came on. I’m free to write. In all my imperfect glory.

See you on the other side.