So, one of my goals with…

So, one of my goals with the Patreon thing is not just to motivate myself to write daily, although that's a big one, but also to write more bravely. I think back to the writer I was in my 20s, and I just...didn't care. I wrote a lot about sex, and yes, it was nerve-wracking, bucking social taboos, but I was certain enough of the rightness of my cause that I pretty much just went ahead anyway.

Now, I have a comfortable life, the respect of my peers, social approval -- and that's all a little addictive, and maybe a little poisonous to the writing. I..hesitate, to write things that might get me in trouble. So I'm not saying that everything I write now is going to be out on the bleeding edge, but I do want to push at that, at least a little bit.

The poem I just wrote and posted made me nervous. I always get anxious when I write about Sri Lanka, even glancingly. What if I got things wrong? I had to look up exactly how many years it had been since the war ended. I posted it, and then second-guessed my mention of the Norwegians -- it was them, wasn't it, who brokered the peace talks, in Oslo, during the cease-fire? I think so, but my memory is muddy.

I feel like I'm not nearly as expert on Sri Lanka as I should be, that I should pay a lot more attention, read a lot more news, be more like Sugi if I'm going to dare to write about my homeland as an expatriate. But on the other hand, if I held myself to that standard, I'd never write about it at all. I may be a distracted, barely-informed, biased, long-expatriate commenter...but I don't think that means I should just stay off the topic altogether. That seems like the cowardly route, not the wise one. And not the writerly one either.

So. Trying to write lots of little things, poems and scenes and snippets, and trying to push myself, with at least some of them, to be braver. Foreground my subjectivity, my ignorance, when needed, when I can. But let the thoughts and emotions out, even if they're sometimes messy and ugly and stupid.

We'll see how it goes.

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