I had the idea of writing as practice when I started this blog. As you can see from the tiny number of posts it didn’t go according to plan. My enthusiasm wilted like late-sprouting seedlings under the heat of the July sun. In my case the sun is my endless self scrutiny, which continually casts an unflattering light on everything I think, say, or do. Joko Beck speaks of core beliefs, and one of mine is that I’m not good enough. It’s one of the core beliefs a growing number of people share because in an over-connected society we’re constantly exposed to the best and brightest. The volume of carefully curated social medial showing glamorous vacations, spotless homes, flawless complexions, perfect cooking, brilliant crafts, and unattainable athleticism has grown from drops, to a trickle, to a flood. At the same time, the anonymity of the Internet has enabled a shocking degree of hatred, where psychopaths take glee in commenting on innocuous content, deliberately trying to make people feel bad about themselves for fun. Only a few people are confident enough to ignore all the consequences of engaging with the Internet. I’m not one of them.

Perfectionism

I had the idea of writing as practice when I started this blog. As you can see from the tiny number of posts it didn’t go according to plan. Even writing this post about not writing isn’t going according to plan. There are a few reasons I haven’t written much. The first is my writing process, which is too entangled with planning what to write. I sit down with only the kernel of an idea, but no clue of how to articulate it. English teachers speak of the importance of outlines and I’m starting to see it first-hand. The second is the transient nature of life, including Buddhist realizations. Shinzen Young used an old quote that sums it up. “Yesterday’s Enlightenment is today’s mistake.” Finally, I worry too much about style and grammar. I’ve already made a post on how the SEO has magnified my scrutiny of what and how I write. I’m going to try something new, a 25-minute post. I’m challenging myself to get to the marrow instead of endlessly worrying over the bones.

Process

My writing process is a big part of the problem. First, I don’t know my audience. The truth is that I probably don’t even have one. Google has deliberately made small, independent websites nearly impossible to find. I’m not profitable because I don’t advertise. The only use the big corporations have for me is to hoover up my website to train their AI models. In a way I’m kind of OK with that. We could all use a little Zen in our worlds. Back to the point, the core purpose of writing is to communicate with a target audience, so that poses an obvious problem. 

My other, larger issue is that I don’t sit down with fully formed ideas. I just wrote the paragraph above and already want to delete it. It’s only a small kernel of the truth. As I wrote about ads and monetization, I noticed I rambled into Google searches, wasting time trying to get my facts perfect by looking up whether Adsense is still a thing. This whole article actually started differently and I cut my entire introductory paragraph because I didn’t have a plan and didn’t know where it was going. My blog tends to be more akin to journaling. I use the process of typing to refine my ideas, endlessly rearranging, editing, trimming, and expanding. Time passes all the while and often by the time I’m ready to hit post, hours have passed. I save the post, but by the time I get back to a final read and edit, often days or even weeks later, I’ve almost always changed my thinking. The core idea is still there but I can’t proofread without succumbing to the temptation to go through another round of refinement. I get stuck in an endless editing loop. 

Impermanence

A core of Buddhist practice is impermanence. While it’s tempting to only apply it to the physical world, it applies equally well to ideas and concepts. I’ll have an idea or experience that seems like a sparkling gem of insight, or a unique conceptualization of practice. As I go through my process [n.b. I have hit the 25-minute mark] the gem gradually turns into a lump of coal. Why in the world did I think THAT was important? The article goes into the pile of endless half-written drafts. I change, but the article doesn’t. It’s just a snapshot that no longer rings true.

More on Audience

It doesn’t help matters that I write with some degree of embarrassment. While I doubt anyone reads this at all, I act as if a Zen roshi will find my site and tut-tut over my endless mistakes and misunderstandings. I’m just a student of Zen, and while my brain just instinctively said “we’re all students”, there is a structural distinction between students and teachers in Zen. Teachers are regarded as having a special status that allows them to transmit the true dharma. Students aren’t. I fear the same negative judgement I apply to science writers who write with authority but get the facts completely wrong will be applied to my blog posts about Zen. The truth of the matter is that even roshis probably occasionally cringe at their articles and podcasts when they re-read them later. I’ve also read posts by fellow students that have helped me because they happened to be writing in a state of mind that echoed my own. Part of why I write is to offer that type of mutual encouragement. However, saying I’m just presenting my foibles as a Zen student always feels like I’m rationalizing. In the world of science, where I spend my working hours, there is simply no way of escaping the importance of credentials. 

Style

I have a funky, sometimes idiosyncratic, writing style. Or at least that’s how I see it. Maybe it’s not. While some of my style is self-expression, my drafts can suffer from poor flow and readability. I use passive voice a fair amount, and I’m overly fond of parenthetical expressions. I’m one of those writers who can expand a sentence into a paragraph. It will be grammatically correct, but virtually impossible to follow. It happens because I’m a divergent thinker. My mind is usually a jumble of ideas which are all vying to get out at once. As I articulate one idea, I’m usually already making the cognitive leap to the next. As you might imagine, this poses some challenges both in speaking and in writing. When I’m talking, sometimes I have to pause midstream to deal with two or three branching ideas trying to come out of my mouth at once. When I’m writing, I tend to capture the branches in long sentences and parentheticals. I also turn to jargon as shorthand to compress a fast flow of ideas, but as a general rule people don’t like unfamiliar vocabulary. 

Featured Images

On the Internet today attention grabbing images are the norm; on sites like IG it’s the whole content. I often find myself with a mostly-written post but no featured image. I’m an amateur photographer and all of the photography on this blog is my own work. Using my own phots has the advantage that I own them so there are no copyright issues, plus it gives me a platform to share them outside of Flickr. However, most of my work is nature photography. At best it’s often only tangentially related to my posts. As a result, a post can get stuck in my drafts because I didn’t see the “right” image in my collection of blog-ready photos. I’m going to deal with this challenge by posting either without an image or just picking an appealing shot and going with it. You’re going to see a lot of close-ups of plants, landscapes, and sunsets. Sorry – not sorry.

Outcome

The shortcomings of my writing process and style mean I usually edit heavily from my initial draft. Editing is essential for good writing, but as I mentioned I get stuck in an endless loop. I write relatively slowly because I’m thinking as I right rather than before I sit down. I run out of time, saving a draft. The next time I return I read over the draft, but it almost never reflects my current thinking or understanding. Often I start adding and removing sections, rearranging text, or setting aside material for a different article. Sometimes I scrap it altogether because my thinking has completely changed. Finally, I might decide that a reader will judge me to be overstepping into Zen teacher territory, or just think I’m an idiot. If the article survives the process, which is relatively rare, my inner grammar cop comes out. Then I have to find the image, or edit one to get the right resolution and add a copyright notice. By that point I’ve burned hours but I sill haven’t hit the Publish button.

My new plan is to try to write posts in one sitting and unleash them on the Internet. For me, it will be a practice of non-judgement, and an acknowledgement of the way ideas and concepts evolve and change. Perhaps something that might have ended up in the “draft” queue for eternity might fuel your practice. Even if you decide I’m an irredeemable poser, the very making of that judgement about another Zen practitioner is ultimately grist for the mill.