I quit smoking cigarettes for good in 2000. Even with a few smokes a week, it was still smoking. It is still shit and horrid for your health. My consistency was well, never consistent. I switched brands regularly in an effort to celebrate freedom of choice.

The odd time I would smoke something without a filter. Those things were harsh, with harsher air to swallow. What was I thinking?

Writing is a much healthier vice than smoking. There is nothing like the freedom of the page and screen. Knowing you can put something to it and make it lighten the eyes of readers. The initial stuff that you get down should be without a filter. It can be as harsh as you need it. Getting the first few lines down is always going to be difficult even when the words flow might be flowing well. Revising is equally challenging.  Yet, I’ve found it to be among the most enjoyable parts of the process. It is a filtering out of the words to make them more organized. Over the last few weeks, I’ve started to question myself more on how much of that filter I have applied. Maybe there’s too much of a filter. Have any pitches failed because they might have been better as their own raw versions?

Then I find myself spending too much time on over-analyzing.  

That kind of time is better spent just returning to work. Returning to the drawing boards and planning the next pitch, blog post, or whatever needs to happen next. After much contemplating, the step to figuring out the filter adjustments may be easy. All of my notebook pages tend to have arrows, things scribbled out, the filter doing its’ thing. So maybe the scribbles do not need to be there. Maybe any misspelled words can stay for now. The illegible handwriting can stay unreadable and become words that they never intended to be.

Seems like a plan. Time to filter onward…

@WriterDann