Missed Opportunities

I came across a note today, about Belligerent Mars, that I had made for myself back in June. I bring this up because in it I stated a clear and succinct goal:

Transform Belligerent Mars into a place to publish “deeply personal essays”.

I’m not one for nostalgia by any means, but there is something to looking back on this milestone set four months ago and determine whether or not the current reality lines up with the expectation. There is value in reflecting honestly not just on whether that goal was met, but whether it’s even still a goal worth pursuing.

Having recently watched Jim Coudal’s Webstock talk, I’ve been thinking a lot about goals. How they should be lived-in and well-worn from constant review, scratching out this line or appending that line. The corners frayed, the sheets bent, a sheen from the wear of daily use – goals should be our utilitarian companions on our journey, rather than some souvenir we hang on our wall after the destination is reached. Our goals should reflect not only where we’re going, but where we’ve been - and who we’ve become as we go along.

Jim says that if we want to be successful with our goals, and happy when we do meet them, we should be writing them not as the person we are when we put pen to paper, but rather who we will be when we achieve them. Our goals, in working towards them, change who we are. The goals we set produce an external change in the world, and in applying the necessary force to achieve the desired effect, we too are molded.

Maybe that’s all very obvious to you, but it wasn’t to me. And it’s obvious that it wasn’t to me, too; these goals were written by someone who had hours on his hands, not minutes, and who had something deeply personal to say. But the man who was working towards fulfilling them often had minutes to spare, and who could draw on a rich span of self-deprecation and flawed behavior and thought to craft into writing.

That’s not to say that the two men are diametrical. They both had a strong desire to write beyond their current ability, they both cared about making writing into a constant rather than a part of life in flux, and they both struggled with how to go about doing that. But it belies a much deeper goal:

Write about what you care deeply, but most importantly, write.

It’s not lost on me, that second point. Because setting that goal raised the bar substantially. It’s no longer just about the writing, it’s no longer just about the care. It’s about meeting an incredibly high-expectation of producing great work without the acceptance that great work involves writing a lot of trash.

Barriers

In moving from a focus on quick opinions and observations to an expressive, narrative story telling, there’s been a subtle change in approaching the work, in coming to the act of writing. There is a feeling of preciousness of words, and of writing, and it creates this concrete barrier, bisecting my prefrontal cortex, and it brings to a halt nearly every piece I begin to compose.

Before, what mattered most of the writing was the what of the piece — the idea, the opinion the explanation. That’s no to say that language, or composition, or pacing didn’t matter, because they always do. But these considerations were subservient to the cause of properly getting across that idea.

In this new attempt, what matters most is the how of the essay — how a reader is led through the story, how they arrive at the intended conclusion, how a main point is conveyed from paragraph to paragraph, and then from sentence to sentence, and then again from word to word.

Of course what really matters is both the what and the how. And often it’s the how that follows the what – a writer struggles to produce a compelling effect without having a passion about the subject. This can be overcome with practice and discipline, of course. But a much simpler, and far easier solution is to write about what you feel strongly about.

Expansive

What scares me, perhaps, is the gap between a concise, web- and attention-friendly, 500 word post and the longer, expansive, and thoughtful essays that I believe I can write. Pieces that stretch for 1500 words, or 2500, but don’t feel stretched — rather, they feel as though they were meant to be that long, that they could be no shorter.

In between that comfortable range around 500 and that mindfully crafted length of 1500 or more is a terrible slog. The easy turn of phrase, the surface-level analysis, the obvious examples — all of it dries up. To make it across that thousand-word gap, you need to engage in real serious thought. The kind of thought that needs to stew; the kind of thought that, for this brain and these hands, can’t properly be done with fingers resting on the keyboard. Graduating from these longer forms is moving from grilling burgers to cooking ribs. It’s the same kind of process, but you’re adding time.

Looking Ahead

I’ve been Icarus. I’ve said too much about what I want to do, not gone about the actual doing of it, and fallen in a heap back to earth, singed from the encounter. But writing is something I care deeply about. It’s something I’ve committed to making time for, at the expense of other parts of my life. You will see a more regular set of works here. I won’t pretend that they will all be profound – I won’t even pretend that any of them were ever profound – but I will go on pretending that I am trying always to make them better.

Write what moves you, but above all write. Some good advice to remember for all those moments when you realize just how hard the written word is.