Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.
-- Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro
I've been working my way through The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, and this quote nailed me. I have half a dozen unwritten stories and a dozen unwritten blog posts. I delay writing about technical topics until I know more. I defer penning my fictional fancies for fear of screwing up what seems to me to be a decent idea.
I imagine there's a more knowledgeable, more experienced version of me just waiting to take up the topic at some point in the future, but the reality is he only gets that way through the "practice of." In Kilimanjaro, Harry dies never knowing if he was competent to write the things he planned to write or not. Here's hoping I don't do the same.
My current strategy (at least for the blog) is to write less on any given topic but do it more often. Any other ideas?
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