First post, best post

I find it liberating to write whatever is next in my thoughts. The train doesn’t ever stop, not even for sleep, and for me, capturing some of that stream in a notebook bucket allows me to read those thoughts with some distance. With distance, I can make some sense out of it, and perhaps act with a little more forethought.

But writing for others is a different animal. When I know I’m going to share the thing I’m working on, I begin to notice less useful patterns — how I’ve mixed at least three different metaphors, for example. Of course that matters to the reader (because what sort of shitty writer does that? And brackets!), but for the purposes of making sense of myself to myself, it doesn’t matter at all. In fact it holds me back, because the stream is holy in a way grammar isn’t. (Don’t, as they say, @ me.)

I say all of this because I think it’s important to remember that, while I don’t think first thought is, as Allen Ginsberg used to say, best thought, it does have a unique value. First thought is pure intuition, and that might be right or wrong, but it is always truthful. Perhaps that does make it best thought. Hm.

I am not going to edit this. Well, no, I will edit it for spelling and grammar, but I’m going to leave the train of thought alone.