Just Write Until It Is Just Right.

When I clicked on "Create Article" I wasn't sure what I wanted to write about.  

I had made a note of some ideas in my notebook, but they either weren't resonating with me or my notes were so poorly elaborated on that I couldn't even remember what the original idea was about (hopefully one day I can recall what my intentions were behind "taking risks in writing").

I didn't want to stare at a blank screen, because I knew then that I would probably start to get disheartened or, worse, start to feel like a fraud! The cursor kept blinking and so I decided to try a strategy that I encourage of my students, but that I don't often use myself.  Which is funny, because it's literally the first two words I see on my classroom door every day: Just Write.

So I just wrote.

I wrote about how I didn't know what to write about.

I wrote about my frustrations and fears with writing.

I wrote about my personal celebrations and growing confidence with writing.  

I wrote about the novel I want to return to one day.

I wrote about the two page email response I sent to a parent.

I wrote about Care Bears and beanstalks in the sky.

And none of what I wrote was going to wind up in this post.

And yet everything I wrote about is somehow in this post.

And in writing about nothing and everything, I got out of my way and realized: Oh, right, I could write about the very strategy that I am using to write this blog post.  

I recommend this writing to my students regularly.  I have no idea if they use it or not, because this isn't the kind of writing you share. It's the kind of writing you get out of your system and then go back and sift through for workable ideas.  Get it down/done draft, free write, vomit draft -- it goes by many names and yet they are all the same.

You write to create words.  It is messy, but it gets the job done.  And by the the end of it I had words on the screen.  They weren't good words or even coherent writing, but by the time you read this blog they will have been transformed into something usable, something I can hit "post" on.

Sometimes in order to just post, we have to just write.