Anyone else feel a draft?

I have a problem. I seem to lack the capacity to write drafts. Oh, I try. I make valiant efforts to ford that river, but the currents of my perfectionist mind are frequently too swift to find sure footing. Within a sentence or two, I often lose my footing on the slippery rocks of the riverbed and go cascading down the rapids of revision. Even as I write this, my mind is already devising ways to undermine me. "Don't use that word, you use it all the time," I hear. "That sentence wouldn't even make sense to a Harvard lawyer high on coke." Or my personal favorite: "Can't you say anything without using fifty different literary devices? Damn, David, just say it!"

Every time I sit down to write something for the first time, be it poetry, prose, essay, even emails, my mind squares off and prepares to fight itself to the death. At times, the words just flow and I'm able to fight off the blows of my analytical mind. More often, though, I lose myself mid-thought to a flurry of revisions hurled at me with the precision and speed of a Cy Young pitcher. And just when I think I've got his timing down and I'm ready to knock the next pitch out of the park...change-up, whiff, strike three, take a seat, kid.

Why should I care? What does it matter that my draft be laden with metaphor juxtaposed to terrible grammar and incomplete thoughts? No one is gonna see it, right? The point is simply to get something down. Anything. Something. Just write! The ideas will come if I can just give myself enough time to keep going. I know this to be true as my best writing always comes from moments of clarity when I can write my thoughts like a twelve-guage loaded with buckshot. Precision be damned, let's just spray the whole area with lead! When I release my thoughts as so much buckshot into the side of a barn, the page suddenly comes alive with possibilities, and I can carefully review them to find the best themes and ideas. It's like the story of the Texas sharpshooter: A guy takes a hunting rifle and fires many shots into the side of his barn. His shots go wild, but he finds a nice handful of shots that hit close together. So, ignoring the many other shots fired wildly, he circles those four of five in close proximity and brags that he's a sharpshooter. This is much the same way I arrive at all my greatest writings.

Armed with this knowledge, it should now be a simple thing to just press through the draft and be successful...right? I wish! It's still a struggle each time. Yet the more I persist, the quieter the voices become. The more often I write, the less the arguments seem to hold water. The more times I go to bat, the more wild that pitcher becomes. I say screw precision and just bloody write!

Once more unto the breach

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'"

And so opens the third act of Henry V, by William Shakespeare. When I was younger, I once performed that monologue on the stage, and, still to this day, it never fails to raise my head and stir my blood.

Indeed, a fitting sermon for me in this time of my life. For I have once more entered that breach, and, as Henry suggests, I shall not leave until I am either victorious or I seal the wall up in my own blood and death. I speak figuratively.

I am, once more, a student. It seems hard to believe sometimes. It's been nearly eleven years since I left Georgia Tech and abandoned my pursuit of a degree in theoretical physics. Eleven years, one more year than I was actually in school my entire life. It seems strange to me that I should now come to a point in my life where I have spent more time OUT of school than I was IN school, yet the fact remains. (For those who wonder how that's possible, I didn't go to school during 1st grade, 6th grade, and most of 4th and 8th grades...long story).

I am also no longer a child, I re-enter school within sight of my 30th birthday. Time enough to temper me, steel my resolve, and clarify my purpose. That purpose is to finally complete my degree in physics, while also pursuing a degree in linguistics and anthropology, then head into graduate school and work toward at least one Ph.D. with the ultimate goal of becoming a tenured professor/researcher at a University. I'll be in school for the rest of my life. And that suits me fine, since my education truly has never ceased. Although I have been out of an organized classroom for many years, I have never stopped my own research and education. I have also come to the conclusion, after some eleven years in the corporate arena, that the corporate gig is not for me. I want to help create knowledge and shape minds. I want to write and publish. More than that, it is truly part of my purpose on this Earth.

I say all this with the purpose of encouraging those who may be frustrated in their life or feeling somewhat without purpose. Or perhaps you know your purpose yet feel like you're so far behind that it's out of reach. I tell you it is not out of reach, and you are never behind. You're precisely where you're supposed to be. Had I not left school for nearly eleven years, I would not have matured into the man who can now devote himself to that original purpose. Most likely, I would have burned out along the way. Now, I'm ready and you will be too. Ready to tackle whatever it is that God has destined you to become. Ready to be.

So I say again, "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more...."