Endless Rewriting

You may have noticed I haven’t published a new post in a while. What happened?

I was writing a blog post on how to adopt an orchid plant. I researched, rewrote, researched, rewrote. Weeks, then months, went by without publishing anything. Recriminations abounded. Blog posts are supposed to be more frequent and less time consuming.

I was stuck.

Here it is over two years later and I’ve picked up my blogging notebook. Reading over the last draft of the orchid article, I’m struck by how much work I put into it, and how much better it is than how my memory branded it.

What have I learned from this experience?

1. Pay attention to that small quiet voice that tells you you’re stuck.
2. When you’re stuck, force yourself to set the piece aside.
   That other voice, the one that urges you to check just one more thing, isn’t a friend. You can’t climb out of the hole. Instead, transport yourself to another place for a while. When you come back, the hole is much shallower, maybe even astonishingly so.