endless sentence 1 : note to self

For a newsletter, the beginning doesn't matter and the end doesn't exist. (For the thing as a whole, not each individual post.)

Unless (and maybe even if) your newsletter has some high-profile launch, your first letter is not going to be the first one people read. They may never read it at all.

I find this freeing. So, I say to myself:

You don't need to know what you're doing.

You don't need a plan, or a point.

You can do a bad job.

If you are the kind of you who finds permission and liberation in that, consider yourself addressed. If not, just think of it as overheard, the sound of someone else talking to themself.

I want to give Creative Advice. But I'm in an absolute swamp, when it comes to writing, and I have been for some time. All I can do is talk to myself, and if you find something in there that seems to apply to you as well, I'm very glad. I have a long history of ignoring my own advice.

You do not need to decide how to begin. You began a long time ago. You're in the middle.

Trying to begin is trying to begin again, to get a do-over. It's perfectionism and fear and a desire to control everything. Also a refusal to let the end arrive naturally.

You have to let go. But also, you don't have to do anything. Time will simply continue, no matter how hard you cling. No matter how hard you refuse to move with it.

I do know what you mean, though. You need a first sentence, a first post. And it should be good or useful. This thing can be a lark, a place to experiment and play, but it should also be whole-hearted and thoughtful. There is already a great deal of junk and new machines to replicate it. You do not want to contribute to that. You might just go ahead and trust in your own humanity. And in the process of trying.

You can write for readers (with kindness, clarity, originality, insight) without being overly concerned with whether or not readers actually appear.

In "On Beginnings," Mary Ruefle writes that certain languages, including English, are constructed such that we speak only one sentence our whole life, from first word to last.

You don't understand how that works grammatically, but you can write this letter without looking it up. The newsletter is a provisional form.

It's beautiful, isn't it? The life sentence. You already began it and you don't know how it will end.

You can only write in medias res.