Writing for an audience

This week I wrote something different. It’s not going on the blog. It’s for a more personal audience. It was both harder and easier than normal for me to write. On the one hand I knew the faces that’d be reading it. On the other it was a topic that held personal significant meaning to me and I didn’t want to mess it up.

At first I felt a self-imposed pressure to get it just right. But then I remembered I’ve been writing for years and not letting any pressure get to me in that time. Now should be no different.

In the past, hearkening back to the days of writing essays for professors, most of my writing time felt seized up, chopped to bits, and lacking any ability to convey the thing I really wanted to say. I’ve now learned to trust my process, regardless of the outcome.

Last week I started capturing some ideas for the short piece I planned to write. Then, today I sat down to write it. A blank page can feel overwhelming at times, but returning again and again to that blinking cursor, year after year, has removed so much of the uncertainty of the writing time. I just know that something will come of it, and occasionally I’m quite happy with the results.

I took my favorite idea and wrote a few sentences. It was starting to take shape, but that pressure threatened to loom its ugly head. When I felt blocked I went back to the beginning and re-read it. Going over my previous writing always helps spur me forward to add a few more lines after each iteration.

Through tweaking, re-writing, and editing, I finally got something that felt almost right. But there was still something missing—that element that felt like I was really giving it my all, not just following a formula, but leaving some of my raw emotion on the table.

So I re-read it again, found the place where I wanted to insert my words, and dropped in another paragraph.

Now it was ready.

I don’t know how it will resonate. But that almost doesn’t matter. The process has become a delight, something I can trust, something that can be used to bring the emotions I’ve felt—undefined but bidden, and put them onto the page in a way that starts to narrow the taste gap.

This is the reward of so much time spent writing, countless words that have been written but never shared, and numerous other words shared in various forms of completion. I’ve gained an appreciation for what I want.

Does that mean my writing has reached some level of perfection? On the contrary, there’s so much more I want to learn. But, as to the quality, it doesn’t really matter. It matters more to find something that brings joy, helps convey thought, and allows time to practice our ideas and share them to the world.