Smokin' Hot Tired Writing

*crummy full moon shot on my way to work at oh-dark-thirty

“Write hot, edit cold.” Heard that one? Whatever it is that’s smokin’ in your soul, write it out, say what you need to say with no thought of editor or as I heard Jamie Quatro say, “Lock momma in the closet.” Then walk away from it, have a cuppa herbal tea or a glass of Sangiovese, go for a run or a walk, and then return to your writing with a cooler head prevailing and shape and polish and snip snip, then publish. It’s sound advice for your novel or essay collection or dissertation. But maybe not so much Substack writing because to edit cold you do have to have that essential ingredient known as time.

A variation on that oft-heard advice could be—“write tired, edit rested.” Even if you’re bone-weary (and aren’t we all, somewhere on the continuum of tired, every day, all the time?), place your writerly ass in the chair and crank out your 500 words for the day or your morning pages or whatever tag you have for the discipline you try to follow. Then walk away, sleep on it, and on waking return to your writing to edit refreshed and clear-eyed. Again, decent advice, I get it. However, such thinking can keep you from publishing much of anything on Substack because you’re always tired, and a state of rest is nowhere on the horizon because again there’s that rascally thing needed to rest called time.

I could be in the minority here, but on this platform (which I signed up for because I thought it was outlaw—you know, no rules, old West, punk rock give-the -establishment-the-swollen-middle-finger) I like to read smokin’ hot tired writing probably because that’s the only kind of writing I’m capable of doing in this season of my life. I’m writing stuff in my head all the time and I’m also working just about all of the time which leaves me tired all of the freakin’ time (and I’m not saying don’t spell check your pieces on Substack because that takes no time), but maybe Substack is a great place for not worrying about cold, rested prose, you know, the kind that’s had the editing rake to it which took a little or a lotta time.

I realize I’m writing this to me (isn’t that what we do though?). Dear John, write smokin’ hot tired here on Substack and don’t worry about it. That coveted state of rest? Largely an illusion anyway, pal, or as that old woman you used to know would say, “You can sleep when you’re dead, child.”

For that novel you may be working on, yes, bring the cold dispassionate shears of editing to it, but for these posts, these signal flares we’re leaving along the road for each other not so much to light the way as to say, “Hiya, this is how I see it from over here,” then lock momma or professor killjoy or officer grammargood or whoever’s voice keeps you hogtied and let that smokin’ hot tired writing rip.