If you've read any Anne Lamott, you are likely familiar with her notion of "[crappy] first drafts." What compelled me most in that essay when I first read it as an 11th grader was the idea that when you're struggling with a blank page out of fear of your inner critic, you should tell your inner critic to be quiet until there's actually something to critique. I needed that humor, that absurdity, to push me past the potential to the real. And while I can definitely relate to this concept when it comes to writing - just making yourself get that first draft out - I am wondering if this principle relates to my project at large as well.
I don't think this project/experiment is simply about me writing; it's about me having the courage to claim that I'm a creative--- which is to say that I'm a person, and a person with agency, and therefore someone with vulnerability. Simply by declaring that I'd do something for thirty days and share it, I am saying that I'm going to be a crappy first draft, before I am anything else.
There are so many ways in which I have spent the last I don't know how many years hiding in my mind, analyzing, holding back, being reserved, hiding from my own inner critic. But what was there to critique if I didn't do anything? So I'm wrestling now with the possibility that the real, the broken, and the imperfect could be better than the theoretical.
And that scares the crap out of me.
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