WRITING: Meeting The Pain of Not Being Perfect

The future. We can see it. Before we write. We can see it. Good, bad, ugly, doesn't matter how it looks like. It's a lie we see as truth. We know it's a lie but we believe it's the truth.

We see it as truth. When I say 'we,' I mean me, and many other fellow writers. The only thing I've witnessed that doesn't fall prey to this syndrome: "I'm afraid to write because I can see into the future and no one is going to like it, or worse, I'll never be able to work again or be loved by anyone because my writing is, was or will-be so bad"

The only thing I've seen that doesn't fall prey to this syndrome is being naive, or courageously stupid. That's a form of antidote.  It's not a coincidence that many writers choose mornings as their writing period. Their superpowers of seeing into the negative future are still asleep.

There is no cure-all antidote, except for, what I'm doing now, writing about writing. Sharing how uniquely bad we think we are, dethrones it. It's almost like a leaking house, if you don't throw the water out each day, you'll drown. Talking about it cups the water.

My personal fail for a long time, was to try to find a cure-all solution, to cover my eyes, so that I wouldn't see into the future. Or I would berate it, belittle my negativity about the future, shame it, instead of acknowledging its superpower; seeing into the future, being able to construct (with precision) galactic scenarios of bad.

For me, it has been about meeting the pain, but not in a 'no pain, no gain' approach. But calmly being with waves of kinesthetic discomfort, the emotional discomfort, by separating the two. One is the ability that sees the future, the other is an image, a future (vague) scenario. One is the image. One is emotion. Together, I can't fight them. Apart, I try and breathe through the discomfort (with 13% success rate, against -13% success rate when I didn't separate them), through the discomfort of physical breathing blockages, and when I can see in the future, it's just my imagination showing its talent. Meeting the pain is no issue when you've split it up, and for years I didn't. I'm still working on that habit, and it hasn't changed anything for the better, except that tiny massive approach of splitting them up.

Now, every time I write. I feel that I have a chance because I've started a conversation, instead of reacting. Instead of being afraid of the bully,  or being a bully against the bully. The boring middle, the boring calm, opens a way in. And I'm sure because I can see into the future, that the point of writing was mostly about getting to know me, the content will turn out to be a wall that sent me in, the strength of fear was the strength of gravity I would use to dive inwards.

Now I write, I meet the pain in small parts. Not by thought, but by practice and over-preparing for a session. It's not meant to work perfectly, and that is the essence of meeting the pain, being okay with not being perfect.