Not a story about me through their eyes then. Find the beginning, the slight silver key to unlock it, to dig it out. Here then is a maze to begin, be in.
Two years ago Charlie Bowdre and I criss-crossed the Canadian border. Ten miles north of it ten miles south. Our horses stepped from country to country, across low rivers, through different colors of tree green. The two of us, our criss-cross like a whip in slow motion, the ridge of action rising and falling, getting narrower in radius till it ended and we drifted down to Mexico and old heat. That there is nothing of depth, of significant accuracy, of wealth in the image, I know. It is there for a beginning.
—Michael Ondaatje, The Collected Works of Billie the Kid
A day late, you got me! I didn’t want to leave you hanging, so lemme answer a reader question from a while back and give you something to think about related to next Monday’s post.
In drafting 1/ calming the chaos I mentioned that my newsletter editions are ‘first drafts from free writes.’ A reader asked, “Are all your Substack posts first drafts? And if so, what's the decision behind that? Why do you choose not to develop them beyond the first draft? Many thanks!”
I had planned on writing about this very thing in a post on setting writing standards for public work, so thank you for asking Harrison & Corrina, and so kindly! I’ll explain hastily now.
First, I started this newsletter because people asked me to do it and I wanted to, but also / mainly for these reasons:
I like helping people. It’s the thing I like most. My 1:1 coaching is expensive, and I was having lots of free sessions with folks who needed some advice and guidance but couldn’t afford to be a client. I wanted to be able to direct those people to more stuff for their journey, create stuff for their journey, and help more people like that. That was one goal. Be helpful to others.
I also needed a structure to help me record what I was learning from all of my writers, and to ‘codify’ the guidance, ideas, practices, and exercises emerging from my work. My goal is for this effort to eventually converge into a book on writing for living, to teach you how to use writing as a practice and a craft to liberate yourself from self-limiting stories and expand your life. It is not hard to do this work in session with writers, where the practices, questions, and guidance come up organically / are designed in response to their circumstances and discoveries on and off the page. It’s harder to contain it within neat lessons that can reach lots of people in different circumstances. Creating more general directions for a range of readers is a worthy challenge. And I want to nail my philosophy and practice around this Great Loop of life-craft, craft-life. I don’t know, maybe I’ll call it ‘Life CRaft: Writing the Ship of Your Soul’ 😂 (I’m kidding, I’m cool. It’ll probably be called “Live Thru This”).
These were my goals. My goals did not and do not include anything related to fame, money, or legacy. I like money ok but I get that from my business, and I don’t care about those other things at all. You can tell by how I choose to title these posts that this is not part of a funnel, just an expression of me writing. My goal is to help people and to help myself prepare drafts for what I later want to put together into a book, a book which will also, I hope, keep helping people. Knowing this makes all my other decisions easier.
Because based on those goals, I set myself some standards. How much effort and time am I putting into this to reach these goals? This is my standard of process. I try to give myself Mondays off from meetings and other work to write these posts. Between my other creative projects and my work, I have some creative energy to protect—if I turned one day into three days, what would I have to give up? I usually start them with voice notes that week, or pull a sketched idea from my long list of ‘things to write’ into a Substack draft page on Sunday.
Often, I want to write about what’s inspired me that week, like something that kept coming up in sessions, or some cool cloud I saw, so I like writing freshly each week. Because I don’t always know how much room an idea needs in written form, and because when Pablo stops by needing help giving medicine to a lamb, or John and Kim are putting their ducks out and want you to come see, or the guy with the big fan who was supposed to come last week is now suddenly calling you from the other side of the gate, or it’s not too hot to go to the river, flexibility is important. Balance is really important, too, and I have my reading and my lying around in the sun. I’m in no rush and in no rush to be. So my time commitment should reflect that. And checking in on my goals, I would rather use the time I want to use to share more usable stuff more often than worry about making one thing perfect in every way.
I also have a standard of craft to make things easier. This is my natural writing voice and it’s the standard for this project. It’s not the same standard I had when I wrote my masters thesis! It’s certainly not the standard I have for the secret writing no one has ever seen because my standard for it is so high. That’s fine! It’s the one that makes this the most fun for me and makes the most sense wrt my goals. My standard of content is to ‘codify’ the exercises and teachings that come out of my work in response to real problems from actual writers trying to do their thing, or ideas that I’ve found to be helpful for my writers, my friends, myself. I have a writing goal to push myself to include personal stories because that is helpful to people and a challenge to my fear of being known, so that influences my standard of content as well.
If I do or try these things, I’m good with it if it goes out a little shaggy, or comes around the long way. (If you’ve read Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing, which I recommend, it’s completely unedited and that really adds to the charm! At least that’s what I think 😂.)
So are these first drafts from sketches, advanced sketches, second cuts? I don’t know, I don’t care! They are just what I can do to reach my goals within my standards. I’m excited for what all this will become. When I’m ready to put this all together in a book, I’ll have everything I need and can then craft more closely, create a journey through reflections and suggestions, and include more off-the-page examples, more references to my favorite writing and my favorite writing on writing, more philosophy deep-dives, more Zen, deeper and more pervasive narrative therapy approaches, more pervasive dogs maybe, probably more John Darnielle quotes, more brain science, more winter, and much more after that. Everything good will be given a Name.
But to meet my goals for this project, I don’t need to and in fact can’t do all of those things. Because it’s just the beginning. I created a container that would provide the structure, balance, inspiration, and avenue I needed to make progress toward my goals. If I raised my personal standards and needed every piece polished to perfection, I would probably charge for that because it would take me thrice as long. Or, more likely, I would just never do it. Because it would take me thrice as long, and I personally would hate that. As always, write the rules that help you write, ignore the ones that don’t.
That’s all, folks! But it’s not all we have to say about goals. Next week, you’ll learn about setting goals for your reader, and a goals-related framework that’ll help you make decisions at many points in the writing process—and in the living process. If you want another goals piece to read related to all this, revisit ‘do you know your writing goals?’ from a while back.
This week, what are your goals for some project you have going on, or something you have been itching to begin? Wonder toward your standards for it. See if this helps you take some more first steps.
Catch you on Friday, and thanks for all the kind notes about last week’s post! Happy to be here with you all!