Another excellent post by Allison K Williams:

“Longing for closure leads us to save another draft, to move files around, to locate all the notes we’ve written on napkins and incorporate them into the manuscript. Actually writing means making hard choices about our time, abandoning some tasks we’re really good at, letting other people screw things up and screw themselves up. Because fundamentally, seeking closure feeds our arrogance. I’m the only one who can do this/fix this/fill this gap.“

I’ve taken a lot of time off from my first book. A lot of time to see what I can learn about pacing and about what wasn’t working. A lot of time starting and completing other tasks, not because I couldn’t make hard choices or because I was afraid of screwing things up but because I simply hadn’t yet learned what I needed to complete this task. In a way, I suppose I let go my arrogance. I believe I’m ready now to do what needs to be done, yet I still find myself hesitating. Partly this is due to basic life things like time constraints and lack of a dedicated space I can take over without repercussion. And mostly it’s because thinking I know what I needed to know now, there are no more genuine reasons and all is excuses and that’s terrifying. I am at the point where I am the only one who can do this next thing that needs to be done, and rather than fueling my arrogance, it’s fueling my fear.

I’m curious about that fear though. Trying to understand it, let it have it’s moment. What exactly am I afraid of?

I believe my current fear is publishing something I’m not proud of. Publishing something that outright embarrasses me. I am at war with the pieces of me that insist: a work be the best I can do at the time and be something that even as I learn more I don’t regret having put out. In other words, I thought this was done years ago, and if I’d published it the way it is, I would be too embarrassed to ever tell anyone about it and it’d be difficult to ever feel confident enough to publish anything else. The work wasn’t ready.

I knew that deep down and simply didn’t want to admit it. And I wanted a quick fix.

Now I believe I can make it what it needs to be, and there’s a slight fear that I’ll once again “do what needs to be done” and think it’s complete when it really isn’t. Not knowing it’s not complete, I’ll shop it out, get it published, and regret it.

*release long breath*

Yup. The fear not of failure to publish, but of publishing regret. And honestly, that’s just silly. We are all learning all the time, if we’re living that is. We are all becoming better versions of ourselves. This book could be better in twenty years than it is now as I continue to learn, there will always be things I would have changed or done better. The possibility of regretting is always there. Always.

Our job as creators, as artists, as people hoping to connect with people through our beautifully tragic lives is to create and disseminate.

Dwelling in the possibility of regret is a certain way to dwell in a vacuum of never. I would much rather dwell in a expanse of perhaps.