by Gabriel Thomas ’24<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s always so much pressure to write, in writing, in editing, in drafting. Pressure to \u201cget it right,\u201d pressure to produce something that\u2019s worth reading or turning in, that communicates your ideas or your feelings or your intentions. It\u2019s so much easier to just sit and think about how good a piece of writing could be, instead of actually writing it and realizing it doesn\u2019t sound as good as you imagined. There\u2019s comfort in the beginning\u2014nothing has been said yet, no one can criticize, all ideas are good ideas. And it\u2019s also hard to get in the groove, to start writing again, and again, and again, and again. There\u2019s always so much pressure to create, and not just to create, but to create something worthwhile, something that actually matters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Often when I finish a paper, I\u2019m nervous to start again. My inner monologue goes something like this: \u201cHow can my next paper be as good as my last? What happens when I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m talking about? What if I\u2019ve used up all my good writing?\u201d as if writing is a limited supply that we pour a little more out of each time we write. Like all of the writing we can ever do is essentially contained in a big jar, and every time we write we lose a little bit of that good writing. So then it\u2019s hard to start the next paper or assignment or project. There\u2019s just so much pressure. Living in the potentiality of a piece is so much easier. Because when we write, we ascribe ourselves to the value of what\u2019s been written. In writing, we assert the value of the idea or statement. We\u00a0claim<\/em>\u00a0something, we take a stand. This is certainly important and definitely good, but that doesn\u2019t make it easy. How can we be sure that it\u2019s actually good? That what we\u2019re saying or writing is worth it? But that\u2019s the trick. We will never know that. Living in the potentiality of a piece does no work. It\u2019s easy because it\u2019s worthless. Nothing worth much of anything comes easy. If writing well came easy, then everyone would have a Pulitzer and everyone would be a New York Times best seller. So we have to take that stand, we have to assert something, and trust that we\u2019ll figure out how to make it matter along the way.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then, let\u2019s say we do write something, a piece we\u2019re proud of, a piece that makes us lean back and think \u201cyeah that\u2019s good.\u201d We never get to relish this, or at least I feel like I never can. For me, it\u2019s always \u201cwhat\u2019s next.\u201d Never sitting with the beauty I\u2019ve just created and appreciating it. I always feel the pressure to create the next piece, the next paper, the next project. And this can be incredibly draining. Sometimes I want to sit there and yell, \u201cno look, this actually is worth something, why can\u2019t we appreciate this before wondering what comes next?\u201d But I never get an answer. And I never will. So I\u2019m always back to square one, with one solution: write. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Gabriel Thomas ’24 There\u2019s always so much pressure to write, in writing, in editing, in drafting. Pressure to \u201cget it right,\u201d pressure to produce something that\u2019s worth reading or turning in, that communicates your ideas or your feelings or your intentions. It\u2019s so much easier to just sit and think about how good a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.wooster.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.wooster.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.wooster.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.wooster.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.wooster.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inside.wooster.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":351,"href":"https:\/\/inside.wooster.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions\/351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.wooster.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.wooster.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.wooster.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}