writing dojo

finding freedom, one imperfect sentence at a time

One sentence at a time. One imperfect sentence at a time. Don’t stop. Keep it flowing.

This is basically my motto now. My mantra. Not just for writing, but for every area of my life where perfectionism shows up, which is all of them. One sentence at a time, one step at a time, one meal at a time, one conversation at a time, one 25 minute work session at a time. It's all the same idea, and this practice is starting to unfreeze me from my perfectionist patterns after a long period of being paralyzed.

But I want to talk about writing specifically, because it's one of the foundations of my life. When the words are flowing out of me, other things in life tend to flow as well. So for the last month or so, I've been channeling a lot of energy into unfreezing myself as a writer, because I know how it tends to ripple outward.

When it comes to writing, my patterns of perfectionism are pretty clear. Usually it looks something like this:

I get inspired. An idea pops into my head. An insight. A surge of energy. Holy shit, this is going to be amazing. I'm going to publish this and everyone will see how smart and cool I am!

Then I sit down and start writing and it quickly dawns on me that what's streaming out of my fingers is... not all that cool or insightful or unique, as my initial wave of excitement thought it would be. I run face first into the wall of reality, which is that writing something good is challenging. Right on queue, my inner critic kicks into high gear. You're not that smart bro. You gotta try harder.

From the moment my inner critic enters the convo, one of two things generally happens next. Either I go into relentless editing mode–where I try to make what little I've written sound good–or I go into hyperdrive idea generation mode, where my brain kicks into high gear and starts spitting out new ideas at a rate that my fingers can't keep up with, and I end up with a draft full of little shards and fragments that don't string together or make sense.

Usually, I do some combination of both, which is why my folder of drafts is a veritable graveyard of “writing” that's really strong for a paragraph or two, before devolving into a torrent of half baked and half finished sentences that don't really amount to much. Once a draft gets to this stage, there's really not much I can do with it. Turning it into something coherent feels like an insurmountable headache, so I just abandon the draft and sweep it under the rug and pretend like nothing ever happened.

This is my pattern of perfectionism in writing, and it's why I feel like I've published so little of what I've wanted to share over the last few years. There have been so many ideas I've been excited to share, but the vast majority of them have been consumed by the above patterns of avoidance.

As for what I’m avoiding, I think this is my ego desperately trying to avoid looking stupid. I don't want people to think I'm a dummy, because somewhere along the way, most likely in school, I picked up the idea that self worth and intelligence are correlated, and I internalized it. I've expended so much energy over the years trying to appear intelligent and control people's perceptions of me, because I thought that was the clearest path to belonging and being accepted and loved. So when I go into either obsessive editing or manic idea generation mode, what it really is beneath the surface is an avoidance of feeling dumb, and a fear that people might perceive me that way and then I'll be alone and poor and die. Seems kinda funny to write it out like that, but that's the pattern.

Enter a practice that I've come to call the Writing Dojo™. Quite simply, when I sit down to write these days, I set an intention to focus, and keep writing the next sentence that feels correct, even if it's imperfect. I'm not letting myself go into editing mode or idea mania. I'm sitting with the feelings of discomfort and dread as they arise, and just writing the next sentence anyway. Then the next one. And the next. Until the timer goes off. That's the writing dojo. And the more I practice stepping into it every day, the more I feel myself softening, melting, and getting into states of flow with writing that just a month ago would have felt impossible.

It's funny. I got pulled into the direction of non-coercion and not using force against myself for several years. The idea being that force applied internally was counterproductive to living well and flourishing. And while I think that season was a necessary counterbalance to the many years I spent idolizing guys like David Goggins and such, I'm happy to be finding my way back to a healthy middle path. I'm glad I'm applying a bit of force to get myself into the writing dojo each day. Partly because it's freeing up ideas that feel like they've been frozen for years, and partly because it's rippling outwards into other areas of my life.

One sentence at a time. One imperfect sentence at a time. Don’t stop. Keep it flowing.