Sing before you know the song. Write imperfectly.

“Revision is when you first get to recognize the distance between what you wanted to write, what you thought you were writing, and what you actually did write. That recognition often makes you want to throw up.” -Carolyn See

Let’s say you are listening to the radio when a brand new song comes on. You like it immediately. So, of course, you sit there quietly and don’t dance or sing along with it until you know every single word of the lyrics and every beat of the music 100% perfectly. Right?

Of course not. How sad would that be? You start dancing as soon as you feel the beat and you probably starting singing along with the few lyrics you can catch on the first listen. Sometimes you make up your own lyrics and end up singing them wrong for weeks before someone points it out.  Sometimes you’re just kind of doing that awkward mumbling humming thing and throwing in an English word somewhat randomly. We come in too early on the refrain. We hit astonishingly sour notes.  We may close our windows but we crank that volume up and we sing even though we have no idea what we are doing. We’ve all been there. It would be ridiculous to wait to enjoy a song until you knew it perfectly.

But so many of us do that with writing. We get an idea but we won’t let ourselves start to write it down until the idea is 100% perfect in our heads. We do this because, when we do start to write, what we write is so imperfect. Ideas that seem so wonderful in our heads look like garbage on the page. As Carolyn says above, they make us want to throw up. The words are wrong and we’ve totally messed up the melody. We expect to know it perfectly, note for note, on the first time through.

You’re learning the song as you sing along with the radio. Every mistake you make is another step towards truly knowing it inside and out. It’s the same with writing. You have to hit those sour notes to figure out the real melody. You need to get the words embarrassingly wrong in order to find the right words. But, most importantly, you need to open your mouth to sing or nothing, good or bad, wrong or right, will ever come out.

Revision is when you go for that 100% polished perfect. Revision is the time when you put on your tux and get ready to sing that song for the crowd. But starting? Beginning? You don’t need the tux.

It’s just you, in the car, with your new favorite song.