This Started As Something Else
In my mind, one of the aspects of writing that this blog makes visible is failure. I am not sure if that is actually true or if it is just a fantasy of mine. Failure is a tough thing to write about, though honestly it surrounds us all every day. When I step into my office I look around and see all of the things that I have failed to do, all of the projects that I am working on but that may never reach the light of day. In each book in my bookshelf, I see the idea I once had but never furthered. All of these feel to me on the daily like little failures, or in some cases, big failures.
Even the things that other people see as successes, books finished and published, awards, etc. I look at them and think of the typo that I know lurks within, of the factual error or the failure of nuance in a sentence. Yes, even success as the whisper of imperfection, of disappointment, of failure.
Honestly, I quite like it. Or at least I appreciate it. That sense of this wasn’t quite what I wanted it to be fuels the next thing and the next. It keeps the work going. At some point, the work will stop, not out of failure, but out of exhaustion, or an end of resources, an end of time, some kind of ending. Holding on to the failures, the not quite there, is a way to hold on to life.
All of this is quite philosophical and not where I began this post. I wanted to start it with a small crow about an article that Bitter Southerner published of mine. Bitter Southerner has been a dream publication of mine. I admire their work, the content of what the online magazine publishes, and their gorgeous visual sense. They made a beautiful image to go with the article. I encourage you to go and check it out.
And the starting as something else? That was not a reference to the blog post, though it became that. This article just published by Bitter Southerner started as something else. A writing project during the pandemic. It started and stalled. It was a lousy first draft. It was too big and about too many things. I loved it until I hated it. Then I set it aside. Then I resurrected it in a frenzy of cleaning my office, and I thought, oh, I know what this could be. And I pitched Bitter Southerner and they said yes and today it went into the world.
It started as something else.
