Tom Littrell
Cleaning unwritten drafts
While headed towards a Chinese restaurant, I held my notebook tucked in between the warm fold of my arm. The notebook is a go-to object to grab when headed out the door on a solo excursion where I know I’ll be occupying a space meant for more folks than one.
Surely enough, I was sat at a four-person table in a packed place full of cheery, chatty citizens. I opened the brown, cloth-bound book and didn’t know what to scribble in the time before my tofu peppercorn dish would arrive.
Thinking of what to write had me writing down topics I could possibly write about. Here are those topics.
I’m also including a slurry of pending post titles to clean up my drafts folder. At one point I thought these words would spur well-wrought articles, but instead they’ve occupied a digital graveyard. In case they might be a source for future thoughts, I wish to preserve them—while not allowing them to crowd the sacred canvas, the digital abyss, the zero-bit brain bin dot txt.
…
What it means to break from comfort—and why it is the absolute most comfortable
Whether it is necessary to deviate from your authorial style after you are almost certain you have established one
What it feels like to imagine the magnetization of attention—and why it is a lie
Embarrassment toward certain potential writing subjects—and why those are the most authentic and therefore essential
Pseudo-intellectualism, uncertainty in one’s craft, and how to be sure you are not simply a savvy buffoon
Jealousy towards cheery people and how a single phrase can open wide the otherwise unaffected
The daunting thought that everything has already been written and you are wasting your words
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Beach House, Bummly, Capitalization Crisis, Deletism, Discontent, Fructose, Giddy Prompts, Literary Blue Balls, Milk, Plants, Principles, Privacy, Self-discipline, Stingray, Superstition, The Horween Wrist Wrangler, Tiny Concerts, Ukrzaliznytsia