The Draft That Knew Before I Did

It started as a normal blog post. I sat down tonight to write something about the first Creative Writing class, you know, a recap, a little reflection, maybe a line or two about how strange it felt to be in a room full of people who actually wanted to be writers. Easy enough. I've been writing this blog for almost three years. I know how to string a paragraph together.

Except somewhere around the third paragraph I stopped and read back what I'd written, and I got this cold, quiet feeling. Not bad, exactly. More like being caught. Because what was on the screen wasn't a recap. It was, it was the thing itself. The exact kind of writing my instructor had circled in my in-class prompt and written 'keep going' next to. I wasn't describing the experience of the class. I was doing the thing the class was trying to teach me, without trying, without noticing, in a blog post I was writing at eleven o'clock on a Monday because I couldn't sleep.

the exact moment before the realization hit

I closed the laptop. Sat there for a while. There's something deeply weird about having your own blog prove a point at you. Like, I published that 'not for the blog' draft a few weeks ago, the one I'd been sitting on since July, the mission-statement one, and I thought maybe that was the moment of figuring something out. But apparently the figuring out is ongoing. Apparently every time I sit down to write 'just a post,' the draft knows something I don't.

ceiling. indefinitely.

I don't know if that's a good thing or a terrifying thing. It's probably both. It depends on the hour. Tonight, at this hour, I'm going to go to sleep and pretend I'm not already thinking about what comes next.