The Precursor Writing Rant

Before I really start writing about all the things I intend to write about, I need to say one thing. For me, writing is a really, really hard thing to do. It is a headache. It takes unreasonably long. It offers an infinite agony of choice and infinite room for critique from oneself and others. Writing is hard work.

Of course, none of this prevents writing from also being completely wonderful and enlightening and essential and painful as it is, it is something I love to do. I enjoy the feeling (and the result) of putting carefully chosen words together to articulate an idea, BUT…. It is almost always a long, drearisome and frustrating process and before I embark on another, new writing experiment (yes, there have been many) I just need to include this little precursor rant; as a disclaimer of sorts.

I am the kind of writer who deliberates over every single word and phrase. What is being conveyed, by whom, to whom, is it accurate, is it engaging, is it appropriate, is it relevant, is it too fancy, too academic, too snide, too self-referential? When poised to write something, the process quickly becomes about making infinitely infinitesimal decisions about individual words, with the continued hope that the resulting construction will hold together, in form, in a glorious wholeness that will carry and communicate my ideas. 

I don’t know exactly why it feels important for me to include a precursor writing rant at the beginning of a blogging experiment, it may simply function as a kind of unblocking – a way of getting started, of focusing my mind on what it is I actually want to write about here. It is also probably because I am chronically self-reflexive and tend to force that outlook on everything I think about too. If I need to write about literally anything, I will end up thinking about… writing. And that is pretty much what happened here.

Welcome to our 'think' blog.