PUSH: Perfectionism

I shared on Monday how I've trained myself to push through my perfectionism and "just" write. After years of scoffing at the writing process (during my youth and young adulthood), I now embrace it and love it. For those of you who think you are not familiar with the writing process, it goes a little something like this:

Prewrite
Write
Rewrite

Prewriting is the brain-storming, researching phase when you're allowed to do fun things like brainstorming, freewriting and creating, flow charts, outlines, and mind maps, like this:

The good times of mind maps. And bacon.

The writing phase is when you write your first draft. For many years, I thought anyone worth his or her salt as a writer should write a perfect first draft, with no need for full revision. During this stage in my writing life, I thought of the rewriting stage as simple editing--fixing typos, and spelling mistakes, perhaps rewriting a sentence or two for clarity.

Now I understand this final stage to include full revision--almost a starting over, at times, when I re vision my piece and see it through new eyes. Sometimes this re-seeing involves a new draft approached in a different way (a story told from the third-person point of view, instead of first, for example). Only after the piece of writing has evolved is it ready for editing.

At this point, if you're still awake, you're either saying, "I think some teacher somewhere talked about that before," or "Get to the point, Erica." The point is that blogging in general, and this blog in particular, is much different than other kinds of writing I've done in the past. In order to post every day and to push through my fear, there's not a lot of long-term revision (re visioning) going on. It's like I'm back in high school, submitting edited rough drafts. I suspect anyone following this blog (and so far I have one reader. I think I can handle one) will see it develop and gel as . I'll slowly, in the first weeks, lay out my ideas about prayer and writing while I (privately) practice praying.

I'm learning that it's going to take time to develop the habit of "selfish" prayer. I'm quite used to praying for others--Your friend lost his child? You've got my prayers. Tornadoes in Texas? Prayers. Mother's health failing? Prayers. Mother's cousin's granddaughter broke her arm? (You get the picture.) But praying for myself? And not about something "real" like the time a migraine gave me stroke-like symptoms and scared the pants off my husband and me. . .this is just. . .stuff. Silly stuff. I need to remind myself that this is more than "stuff." This is my attempt to live life fully and to put my God-given talents to work.

This is only my fourth post and already I'm second-guessing my order of ideas and how I've introduced my thoughts. Unfortunately, there's no way to do this blog thing perfectly. I just need to do it. My imperfect, haphazardly-ordered posts will mirror my on-again-off again prayer practice. (An admission: other than the half-joking prayer I included in yesterday's post, I've not turned to God again to ask for help with my fears.)

How about I preview this, post it, and then pray? Sure, I'll pray for the ill and the injured and hurting among us (I would have done that, anyway), but I promise to keep with this experiment of PUSH by praying for myself.