The expression of Regular Movement that I have been involved in of late is editing and publishing rather than writing, which I am enjoying a lot. The presentation of the work in finished products and complete collections feels like it has completed work I started some time ago, and I know that eventually it will pave the way for easier creation on the front end. Stack up a pile of incomplete projects and you soon start to feel it is hard to complete projects – get a few through the lines and you start to see the possibility of doing more.
I know some writers who hate their earlier work, and feel that everything is about the iterative nature of the now, but I find something valuable in revisiting some of this older work, and using it to learn things about how I wrote, and how I arrived in the place that my writing is at now.
Never to late to learn, and surprisingly never too late to learn from yourself. Well, if you can stand to look in the mirror and stare the reflection down, which, if you can’t, why are you writing? Hard to be a coward and write. Hard not to engage in self reflection and self awareness and practice an art that requires both to truly be alive.
The realness of the words are something I can feel, but the quality is something judged by others I suppose; though if you felt yourself to be terrible why would you inflict that on people? Despite moments of insecurity you have to find a certain degree of confidence in yourself to put your words out there, and if that confidence does not derive from some sense of your own competence, are you just reveling in self-delusion, and how does that square with self awareness? It is not an easy marriage. Not, of course, that it doesn’t happen, but one always hopes that it is not a crime of which they themselves are guilty.
Anyway – much publishing and a little less writing.