I knew a guy in college who’d rewritten his 600-page novel four times in the hopes that it would be good enough to be published. He wouldn’t let anyone see it. “Unfinished, sloppy, not good enough” he’d say. When finally we did see it, it wasn’t good enough even by our then not terribly high standards. But he’d already re-written it so many times, none of us couldn’t have told him to do it again at that point. So we did what humans do. We lied. The thing never did get published, of course, but I wonder still, to this day if he’d ever written anything else. Because in truth, he couldn’t have not known even then. And the idea as I recall it was a good one. Just the execution of it that needed work, but alas, embarrassment or fear of rejection has kept even the bravest among us from sharing our half-baked works. God knows it’s kept me from doing it. And so we write in a vacuum, hoping that some internal arbiter of quality will know for certain when are words ARE good enough to see the light of day. To be judged.
I was one of those writers for almost two decades. Writing for me has always been an escape from the more serious, more adult things, much as reading had been earlier. Creating a place my brain could meander through, get lost in–an almost dreamlike state of being that felt better than anything while I was at it. Up until I had to put that last period at the end. Waking up from that was like burying the dead over and over. The people I created - gone for good. The places, at times the words I had to make up to make them fit the people and the places - entire histories scrapped, buried. I was too scared to share them with the world.
At times, I still am, but I am braving through it more and more. And if nothing else, it makes waking up from the place I go to when I write a bit less painful.
Grateful for these free writes prompts more than you know 
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