written

A couple of years ago I wrote a small collection of haiku which were not very good. At the time I was very proud of them, and I hurried to form them into a little zine and post them on Etsy, ready to stun the world.

Actually, that is a bit of a lie. I did not think they were stunning in the least. They were somewhat embarrassing but I was determined to turn something I had written into something I could distribute, whether or not I thought it would be acceptable to others. It was an exercise in overcoming fear.

At the time I was consistently updating my blog with everything from haiku about movies I had watched to monthly goals to long posts about how to be a good theater patron. Oddly, it seemed like a very large leap from blog posts to a tangible zine. Both are a form of self-publishing, but it was somehow safer to shoot something off on my blog than to type out and photocopy a single-page accordion-fold zine.

In the end I only sent out one zine, and that to a friend.

Recently I have been reading several books about writing. All are adamant about their One Weird Tip for improving your writing: write. Write and write and keep on writing. Write about anything and everything. Write everyday. Write observations, write stories, write a journal, write letters. Just write. Write so much that you forget not to write.

In light of all this encouragement to just write, I've become less embarrassed by my little book of haiku. Who cares if is wasn't profound? At least I was writing.