My Sort-of-friend Doubt

I like a sentence that looks sturdy, bold, impossible to imagine in any other words. But most don't come to mind that way. Each good phrase or sentence I write comes from having written lots of crummy ones. Every sentence, paragraph, or stanza is a choice, and making a choice means there was damage, destruction, a slew of crossed out or deleted words along the way.

And doubt.

I'd love to often sit around with the confidence I try to project in my writing, but the truth is I'm a lot more familiar with doubt. She trips and snags with her smelly tattered dresses, claws with broken fingernails for my attention. But as I work on new poems, I remember what a friend she can be. Choice – terrible because we have to leave things behind – can also be an open door as I look for the right sounds and meanings. On these early drafts I get to write several varieties of lines and leave pages riddled with question marks.

Later I'm going to have to choose. And I hope, when I do, that I'll remember how benign doubt felt by my elbow (her ragged fingernails curled out of sight) while I drafted. Uncertainty means some things get left behind, and it's hard to know if they're the right ones. But the doubt is about what's on the page. It's not about me – or you. It doesn't mean we shouldn't be writing.