We're early on here in that dark pool of night known as midnight to six, where the time is thick, liquid, and impenetrable, and you don't know if you should sink or swim.
I have a half-finished piece of writing sitting on my Jornada that's been there since Saturday. Normally, I don't pre-write before posting -- I may turn something over in my head a bit, but when I log into my account at Blogger and let my fingers fly over the keyboard, I rarely make use of the backspace key. But I had this idea, and I wanted to flesh it out a bit before lobbing it out there.
Oh, frig. I really want to go back and refine that middle sentence in the previous paragraph. I guess I do edit, but for the most part I compose a post in one sitting ("compose" -- oh that's rich) (shut up, shut up, goddam you), hit Publish, and that's it.
But I wonder if spontaneity is just taking the lazy way out. It takes discipline to refine your thoughts, hone your sentences, reduce your point to diamond-like precision (oooh, yuck, bad metaphor) (analogy?) (rhetoric fails me).
Then again, if I worry about polish, things might very well languish and never see the light of day. This latter point occured to me again as I read a little blurb titled "Release Early, Release Often".
So many books on writing tout the virtues of sitting your ass down and committing your words to paper, regardless of mood, inspiration, or lack thereof. Whether or not writing with a computer counts is another thing. Arguably, you lose a certain "purity", given the ease with which you can edit your thoughts via the keyboard.
Even as I sit here, so many half-formed blog bits flash through my head. Do I talk about the books on writing that I've read? Earlier today, I was jotting a little blurb in my head about the absurdity of the website for Hellmann's mayonnaise (I kid you not). Or I can talk about the embarassing mid-80s rock ballad I've got looping on WinAmp right now (group from Seattle, female lead singer and guitarist, song title rhymes with "A Clone"). Or I can continue boring you silly with this ridiculous exercise in metablogging.
Maybe I'll just shut up now. Sounds like a plan.