(No idea when I wrote this one, actually.)

For me, and I have no idea if this is the same for anyone else, writing is like jazz improvisation. Not free jazz, there’s a melody and structure and it’s very syncopated, so each time I begin writing I’m off on a solo, and I work through the piece like I’m soloing, never doubling back or rewriting but in steady continuous melodic invention till I feel like it’s complete and I’ll resolve it, so that it ends on the same theme it began. When it’s done it’s done. Everything I write whether a paragraph or a thousand words is written like that, in one creative burst. The most I’ll do afterward is fix the typos.

Then when I’m finished with a piece it’s nothing to me because the thrill was in the writing. That’s where the words were musical. They are alive as I’m writing them, and they are lifeless written. They’re done. They don’t interest me.

If I were reading them and not writing them it’d be different. I’d think I was a selfish asshole to destroy all these old pieces. (Apparently I purged a bunch of stuff.) But I am not the reader. I’m the writer. And my blogs are full to bursting with dead words.

I’m not being metaphorical here. This is exactly how I write.