#dailywritingpractice

Sometimes art can be easier, but artists can have the same blocks. Sketch books are for sketches. They aren't expected to be perfect. The first penciled lines on a canvas often have nothing to do with the painter's finished work. But artists of all kinds can find the same block and fear of moving forward, expecting perfection at the first try. 

Trying to be perfect. It's not a new concept to me. I grew up with that expectation of perfection and took it out into the world. I was the perfect worker and anything less than perfect was a failure. Failure was the absolute worst thing that could happen, failure could break the world. The sun would fall right out of the sky and it would be my fault. 

 I would love to say my children weren't raised with the shadow of perfection but in my own messy way while I didn't raise them outwardly with the idea that everything they did had to be perfect, that's what I modeled for them. It makes living exhausting, this idea that we have to be perfect. If you are socialized to be a woman then there is an extra added burden of being perfect while making sure that everyone around you is happy and comfortable and has everything they need at the same time. (I'm slowly cracking that ridiculous egg- but it's taking time)  

My challenge to you and me today is to be less than perfect. To be messy and allow ourselves to fumble at things and not worry too much about the outcomes. For me that will mean the work I do today I will try and do well but without carrying the weight of it heavy in my belly. To do it and let it go. I will write today without anxiously anticipating excellent writing or not excellent writing. The proof of my beginning is in this prompt writing. I didn't have an idea to write from. I am in the aftermath of big emotional work with a dead woman's ashes and it feels like the well has run dry. That happens. This writing right now in this moment is less than perfect and there is nothing huge in it, or startling or particularly strong. Today, even though I want to start all over again I'm not going to. This is a day of practicing imperfection.  

This is also a sort of self care. Accepting where I am and saying that it's okay. Moving forward with an attempt at relaxing my ideas of what good work looks like, whether it's volunteering at the switchboard or doing work for someone or writing. What does it look like to work without frenzied expectation, without waiting to hit the wall of exhaustion before I call it done? What does it look like to bring my imperfect exhausted words to the page without hoping for something extraordinary? This is my beginning. We'll see how all the rest goes... 

What about you? Is perfection burning a hole in your pocket? Can you move through the world with some ease today whether you are working or resting or writing? Can you do your best and let it be good enough?   ***

Aristotle

By Billy Collins This is the beginning. Almost anything can happen. This is where you find the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land, the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page. Think of an egg, the letter A, a woman ironing on a bare stage as the heavy curtain rises. This is the very beginning. The first-person narrator introduces himself, tells us about his lineage. The mezzo-soprano stands in the wings. Here the climbers are studying a map or pulling on their long woolen socks. This is early on, years before the Ark, dawn. The profile of an animal is being smeared on the wall of a cave, and you have not yet learned to crawl. This is the opening, the gambit, a pawn moving forward an inch. This is your first night with her, your first night without her. This is the first part where the wheels begin to turn, where the elevator begins its ascent, before the doors lurch apart. This is the middle. Things have had time to get complicated, messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore. Cities have sprouted up along the rivers teeming with people at cross-purposes— a million schemes, a million wild looks. Disappointment unshoulders his knapsack here and pitches his ragged tent. This is the sticky part where the plot congeals, where the action suddenly reverses or swerves off in an outrageous direction. Here the narrator devotes a long paragraph to why Miriam does not want Edward's child. Someone hides a letter under a pillow. Here the aria rises to a pitch, a song of betrayal, salted with revenge. And the climbing party is stuck on a ledge halfway up the mountain. This is the bridge, the painful modulation. This is the thick of things. So much is crowded into the middle— the guitars of Spain, piles of ripe avocados, Russian uniforms, noisy parties, lakeside kisses, arguments heard through a wall— too much to name, too much to think about. And this is the end, the car running out of road, the river losing its name in an ocean, the long nose of the photographed horse touching the white electronic line. This is the colophon, the last elephant in the parade, the empty wheelchair, and pigeons floating down in the evening. Here the stage is littered with bodies, the narrator leads the characters to their cells, and the climbers are in their graves. It is me hitting the period and you closing the book. It is Sylvia Plath in the kitchen and St. Clement with an anchor around his neck. This is the final bit thinning away to nothing. This is the end, according to Aristotle, what we have all been waiting for, what everything comes down to, the destination we cannot help imagining, a streak of light in the sky, a hat on a peg, and outside the cabin, falling leaves.

Prompts: ***  This is the beginning...  ***  Almost anything can happen...  ***  Nothing is simple anymore...  ***  This is the end...  ***  The words are dry and scratchy in his throat...or