I am only a few days into writing this July and I can tell my writing will have to be different. All my previous blog posts over the past few months exercised different mental muscles than what will be required for this month. I would spend weeks on some of those posts, I was never rushed, and I patiently let ideas develop. The first draft for these longer posts would often be unrecognizable to the final product with the amount of editing I did. I am realizing that I have to let go of those expectations for my writing this month.

In the past, I have generally wanted my writing to be as close to perfect as possible. I would work on the stories and what I wanted to say until there was nothing left I felt I needed to change. Of course, they were never perfect, but I always have felt satisfied and happy with the writing I am putting out there. I don’t think that will be the case most days this month. I am frankly self-conscious about this prospect. The thought of misspelling a word, using improper grammar, or stringing together sentences that don’t really follow scares me. The shame of feeling or looking unintelligent is something I have avoided aggressively in the past. 

One way this fear of errors has manifested is the use of writing apps. While I have used Chat GPT for any ideas or actual writing, I have used Grammarly AI to help clean up my work after I have finished writing. I don’t think using an app like this is bad at all, especially if it is just cleaning up some commas or sentence structure. But it does erode the integrity of trying to be fully vulnerable and genuine. 

I was actually talking to Lilly a couple days ago, as I was finishing up my first post for this month. I mentioned how I planned on using Grammarly AI after I finished writing. She encouraged me not to. She reminded me that good writing does come from brilliant syntax or grammar wizardry, but from the story I am trying to convey. While Grammarly AI is a useful tool from time to time, these blog posts do provide an opportunity for myself where I can make mistakes and be okay with them.

So, for the rest of these posts it will only be my own brain at work, no extra assistance. For most posts, I will go through and edit at least once. For today, however, in the spirit of sincerity, I am not editing anything and I am just letting the words flow as they will. This is difficult to do. It makes me anxious to leave what I know are poor sentences and plentiful errors for people to read. But it is a good reminder to myself that avoiding errors doesn’t make a meaningful story that is worth telling. 

I am not rereading anything I wrote. Today is just some unfiltered thoughts and important framing for the future.