In her post, Letters Written In Winter Kept To Ourselves, Emily talks about how she’s spent this winter trying to figure out what to do with the rest of her life. I’ve done something similar, but in my case, I don’t think that I’m looking so much for an answer, but figuring out what questions I feel are worth continuing to live for to keep asking. Or to figure out how to ask better questions that motivate me to keep growing and evolving into the best version of myself I can be one day to the next.
Emily wrote about how I have this way “of arriving before seven in the morning with questions better suited to a graduate seminar than a household still negotiating breakfast.” I said to her that the reason for this is that most of the topics of conversation people brought to the table were often of the same garden-variety griping and airing of grievances that do absolutely nothing for family unity except make us all miserable together. Also, I’m usually up earlier than Emily these days, so I’ve already been up working on questions that motivate me to get out of bed and pursue them with great haste. What’s annoying is that I’m demanding a level of intellectual rigorousness that’s simply not meant for sharing a basic meal within a domestic context.
But as Emily will recall some time ago, early last year I came to tell myself “If you’re not trying to be a legend at something, what’s the point?” And while I may not use this as my mantra now or anything, the same concept has remained a part of my morning routine… “What can I be legendary for before breakfast?” should be my daily affirmation.
When it comes to my writing: It may be that getting the raw data onto the page and sort of just keeping what seems to work well enough, without going too rigorously through a systematized editing process is going to be a better workflow. I keep things “cooking” far too long which is why it has taken me so long to figure out any reliable direction for my own writing. I don’t just get things published. Still, I tend towards these very granular critiques that don’t necessarily merit going back and changing the actual manuscript or anything. They are just where my brain is throwing up error messages or yellow flags.
Meanwhile, Emily puts together a diary entry, keeps the best bits, slaps them on her site, copies it into her book manuscript with perhaps a bit more elaboration or refinement, and just get it out into the world. And that works for her. It doesn’t for me. I have to be brutal and only choose the lines I think are ready and hold the rest back for the future. Emily and I just have very different processes. Not only is this not a bad thing; it may actually be for the best. I can consistently use what she already has on the page to point out things that I’m simply either not getting or could be stated more clearly or with a bit more poetic flair to not only refine my own eye at editing skills, but to give her meaningful constructive feedback she wouldn’t get from anyone else. I also have intimate knowledge of her that no one else has. As she does about me. And I’m far too brutal on myself, but that’s just how I operate. But to subject her or anyone else to the same rigor is just not fair.
