I Have No Idea What I'm Doing

The notebook where all my ideas live

I want to make something very clear: I have no idea what I'm doing.

What exactly do I mean by that? I'm just making it up as I go. Any time I post something on here or on Vocal, I don't really put too much thought into hoping it's going to do numbers, get Top Story, etc. In fact, I make it a point to not think about those things at all.

I'm trying really hard to just write. I spent way too many years worrying about writing things that are perfect. And if they weren't perfect, no way I was sharing them with anyone. Of course, because nothing was ever going to be perfect, I never even dreamed of putting my writing out there.

I got this advice forever ago when I was a teenager, but I didn't take it to heart until recently: let yourself write something bad.

At the time, I hated that advice. Mostly because I absolutely despised the revision process. Why can't I just get it out perfectly the first time so I don't have to go back and fix it? I'm sure you can guess what happened. I barely wrote anything. If I actually had a story I was working on, I wrote maybe a sentence or two every few days.

When I was a junior in high school, my creative writing teacher challenged me to write a novel. She gave me the entire school year to do so. And I only wrote 7,000 words. Folks... Novels are at the very least 50,000 words. Needless to say, my teacher was disappointed and rightfully a bit confused as to how I wrote so little. But like I said, I wanted it to be perfect on the first try. I remember so many days in that class where I either just stared at my notebook or doodled in the margins. At the time, I wasn't very apologetic about not meeting her expectations. Did she really expect a 16-year-old to write a novel?

Don't worry, I realize now those weren't very high expectations. She gave me very little actual assignments in the class so I would have ample time to just write. She even let me listen to music so I could focus while she taught the rest of the class. I can't believe I had so much leniency and took it for granted - just sitting there listening to Mumford & Sons, doodling, and writing only a single sentence. My teacher's disappointment was extremely valid.

It wasn't until a few years ago that I remembered the advice to write badly. I was trying to get back into writing for fun. So when I had an idea I was actually excited about and had a decent outline for, I went for it. I just started writing, not caring about finding the perfect phrasing or the most memorable dialogue. And I had a blast.

Sitting there and scribbling away in my notebook, I forgot how much fun writing could be. After completing a full scene, I sat back and looked at my work. I felt good. I'm sure all of us writers can relate to that euphoria after a solid writing session. I honestly think that feeling is the best drug there is. But even though I felt great about having finally put pen to paper, I still thought the scene was bad.

So what do we do when we have a piece we think is Not Good? We get feedback! A bit scary but extremely necessary. I shared my piece and to my utter shock, people liked it. Of course, they also gave some constructive criticism about some minor tweaks I could make, but no one thought it was Bad the way I thought it was.

Where am I going with this? Like I said, I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to writing. I remind myself of that with my ideas notebook in the picture above (sidenote: I got it from Etsy here). There is no magic step-by-step process for you to follow to the T that will give you the results you want every time. The only thing we can all do is write and write stories that are bad.

But I'll let you in on a secret: your stories probably aren't bad...