the vulnerability of writing

I'm writing a new book and it makes me feel skinless. It's a painful and slow process and it's all I can to do. I write and I cringe and I edit and write and cringe over and over again. I become hyper critical of my writing. I look at old posts and I cringe. I look at new posts and I cringe.

Leighton reminds me it's always like this for me when I start a new writing project, that this is also how it was when I was in the early stages of writing my After Pornified book. I would write and go back and cringe and edit, over and over again.

Part of the reason is that writing is to me thinking. I can't think it all out and then write it down, rather writing is discovery and working and re-working through problems. Because, wait; isn't there another way of looking at it?

When we're at the pool or I'm doing the dishes or I'm looking at the evening sun, scenarios, ideas, solutions, and questions run through my mind and I can't keep up with them. I write notes all over that I later can't decipher. Some I hold onto to discover I've written the same note copious times various places.

Those little flashes of ideas and inspiration that my mind can't keep up with; since they've run through my body, will my body remember? I cross my fingers and hope that's the case. That when I get to a certain blank page, a memory of that idea will come to my fingers.

With my body and mind floating in this space, there's barely any room for other lines of reasoning. I read articles on my phone at the gym in the morning, listening to my ipod, treading the elliptical, and I make a mental note to share this interesting article on Twitter and that one on Facebook and write about this one in one of my blogs. And I form the argument I will make, but by the time I'm at my laptop, the argument is lost and I'm pulled instead to the blank page where I write and I cringe and I write and I cringe and I feel so little, so vulnerable, so skinless, yet all I can do is go on.

So if my writing here or in my other blogs lately seems like it trails off without completion, it is because I can barely collect my mind to drive straight and stop at the red light. I am here, yet I'm not here, I'm drifting somewhere and trying to hold on to something and put it down and it's all spinning very fast and there is no time and there's all the time.

photo credit: qisur