Rough Drafts
A Series of Pieces Written in the Wild
#2
Here’s what I want you to know is a phrase that my cousin who is a writing coach (among many other wonderful things) will offer up for when we’re in the midst of a wild writing session and we feel stuck or the perfectionist, the editor, the inner critic starts getting so loud that the pencil stops moving to try and listen. Or freeze. Here’s what I want you to know is an interesting phrase because I’m not actually sure I want you to know anything. It’s not that I don’t have anything to share — although sometimes I think that feels true — but I also don’t know why I’m sharing. Is it to try and prove myself, do I offer it up as a sacrifice to our relationship because I see it and us as holy, does it show that I care about you or that I care about me? What do I want you know. And why. Here is what I want you to know, those of you that have stuck with this rambling thus far: I have a hard time knowing what I want sometimes. I can tell you what I want to eat, what clothes feel good on my skin, how I miss the cacti stoically standing all around me in the desert and my dismay at my history of killing every cactus gifted to me because they are wild and don’t belong inside with me, a person who either gives it too much space or not enough. What I can’t tell you is my five year plan, a tidy synopsis for my book that I’ve been writing for three years, or how. How what? No idea. Here’s what I want you to know: when the word ‘how’ popped into my brain my brain then went blank. A question. A question with so many possibilities and directions.
