Catch and Release
It’s early Thursday morning and I am writing at my desk next to a burning pumpkin-scented candle. I’ve been grumpy the past few days, in what I can only describe as writer’s block PMS. If you’re a writer, and a woman—I know you know what I mean.
I can’t even say I am blocked, per se, but rather I have a plethora of ideas swimming in my brain, and none of them are turning out on paper the way I had hoped. It’s that feeling you get when you spend an hour getting ready for a party, doing your hair and your makeup and slipping your body into that slinky black dress, and you think you look pretty good when you leave the house, dare I say, stunning, but then someone photographs you at the party, and sends you the picture later, and you’re staring at the image thinking, is that really me? I thought I looked better than that.
My friend Rach Kincaid left Instagram a while ago, and now blogs almost every single day. I’m not into fishing, but I keep thinking of this practice as catch and release.
Catch and release is when you simply have a thought, write about it, and share it immediately. You don’t edit your sentences to death with a chainsaw. You don’t sit on your draft for six months waiting for it to become the best version of itself. You simply catch the words, and release them back into the wild.
Am I capable of this type of writing?
If I have three sentences swirling in my head, I’ll put them in a Google doc and then revisit that document until I have 1500 words, until I have dug to the bottom of the earth, or my own mind, to excavate the idea’s full potential.
I need not tell you how exhausting this is.
Beth Kephart once said, “Don’t save your work. Don’t save something because it feels precious. What feels precious in the moment will grow dusty over time.”
There is a time for slow art, and slow writing. But I am also starting to see there is a time for catch and release, for sharing one simple paragraph that you wrote without the obsessive need to carve it, and carve it, and carve it down to the bone.
There is a time for simply receiving inspiration, putting your butt in the chair, typing out the words, and letting them fly away. Like sitting down on a Thursday morning to write these words, and hitting publish before you make breakfast. Like grabbing a dandelion from the grass, pointing it up to the sun, and making a wish as you blow.
