The Thing I Learned While Procrastinating

This was the best idea I had in a while. Before it disappeared from my mind, I whipped open my laptop, got to Google Drive and created a new document.

I typed a couple of paragraphs and took a breath. There. That’s the start of some magic. As the high wore off and I reread my sure-to-be-genius of an idea, something hit me: Have I written this before? 

A quick search of my seven-hundred-and-seven (!!) Google Docs proved that this gem was old hat. 

Hold on. Was this a freak occurrence or were the rest of these 700+ Google Docs regurgitated thoughts? What the hell even were all these? Down rabbit holes I went to find that a shocking number of files contained like 1.5 pages of words that had spilled over and dried out; blog post ideas, book ideas, articles, life plans, and—as you can guess—there was so much overlap. I literally had three different Google Docs with the same half baked business idea. One written in 2012, another in 2018, and the other 2022.

Three different times my brain thought, “You know what would be awesome?” and three different times my brain did not remember what would be awesome.

Why does this happen? 

Because there’s nothing quite like the promise of a blank piece of paper. All the perfection of what-might-be staring you in the face is way more attractive than sifting through 500 words of daydream mush, so we start over clean, thinking we won’t scuff our narrative sneaks getting to “the end” this time.

If you’re like me, sometimes we forget that when it comes to creating something from scratch we don’t know what we’re doing. That’s what creating means. From thin air. So “to write” we have to inject time to actually think about things and interrogate what we just scribbled.

The question we ultimately must confront if we want to turn something we’re writing into something we have written, is: “Is that true?”

Think about it. 

Writing, as a verb, is easy. Anyone can do that. It’s just sentence structure. What’s the problem, dude? Just write. But “writing” is not about the hammering of a keyboard; it’s the click, drag, and delete. It’s the rephrasing. It’s the walk you take to clear your head and figure out what you actually want to say.

To write is to have an idea. That’s easy. To have written is to share a point of view. That’s hard.

The only way that happens is if you’re convinced that what you ended up with can hold more water than the sieve of your first draft.

And that happens by it withstanding multiple tests of “Is that true?”

Write, reflect, edit. Wri-fl-edit. Riffledit.

Sounds like a German word. Let’s run with it.

The Seesaw

To have written something is always a balance between getting out of your own way and believing what you’re saying. Sure, in the beginning you don’t want to constipate yourself with overthinking. You won’t “solve” it in your head. You need to pour the puzzle pieces out on the table to see what hell you’re even working with.

Some are face down, some are face up. Some don’t even have an image on them yet. Start making connections. Start organizing things.

I’ve said it before: writing isn’t a manifestation of what you’ve discovered, it’s a discovery of what you’ll manifest.

So instead of opening a new document, see if you have worked on that story/idea before. Maybe you were derailed by the first “Is this true?” or “Now what?” 

Dive back in. That’s your path to “the end.”

What was my big idea that led me to write this post instead of working on it? It’s a pilot for a TV show that would be gold. 

I guess I have to go unearth what I really want to say.

Here’s to the journey towards having written whatever it is you’re working on.