Looking for a Good Mess
Absolute trash is the goal.
Trail Mix is a newsletter full of stories about life and running, dispatches from the wilderness, and essays about how it all collides.
My writing practice has been on the struggle bus for the last year, basically since the exact minute I turned in the final draft of To the Gorge.
I was in an online group of authors who debuted in 2024 and I was floored by how many of them were all, “Almost done with book two! Book three on deck!” Or, sharing word counts for their next manuscript that were rapidly climbing towards 100,000 within weeks of their first book coming out.
That was…not my experience.
I would stare at their comments, with a blank word document permanently open on my desktop, and wonder, “But how?”
It’s felt nearly impossible for me to write one word, never mind an entire book. I’ve been stuck behind a creative logjam for months, fueled by some combination of severe burnout, a vulnerability hangover from publishing such a raw book, and a pesky case of perfectionism that’s made it challenging to create much of anything in the wake of my biggest writing project yet.
While I logically understand that a core part of a writing practice is just that: Practice. It’s been hard for me to sit down at my computer and not feel like I immediately need to create my Next Big Thing. Or, even just a Thing. I can’t shake the feeling that I should be writing words that can compete with the last ones that came out of me.
Perfectionism has always been a villain in my writing story (among plenty of other things in life), and it’s definitely swooped in to thwart any writing hopes and dreams that I may have had after publishing To the Gorge. Namely, to write anything at all.
I haven’t been able to let writing be messy. To put the “rough” in draft. Which is exactly what I’ve needed to do to get back into the flow of things.
It’s a lot like when you’re starting to run again after a prolonged break and your first miles feel clunky. But you need to keep showing up and keep moving through the hard miles before running can feel good and flowy again.
With writing, I’ve been struggling with how hard it feels to get out the front door – and just staying on the couch, instead.
As 2024 drew to a close, my burnout started to ebb and I found myself feeling energized to create again.
When I saw an opportunity to join a writing community for all of 2025, I decided to jump on it. I’ve always responded well to shared accountability. A good chunk of my book was written while sitting in coffee shops or on zoom dates with friends, and I thought it might be helpful to jump into a virtual space full of writing dates.
It seemed like a great way to karate kick that creative logjam so I can find my flow again.
The first session I attended was a generative writing workshop led by a poet and essayist out of Portland. It was meant to be a playful and lowkey space to write. No pressure! Just make words for fun! We’re not trying to produce the next Best American Essay in 75 minutes on a Friday afternoon.
We went through some poems to discuss craft and get creative inspiration and then we had 15 minutes of writing time to play with a prompt based on the works we’d read.
I pulled up yet another blank word document and stared at it, feeling the writing version of woefully out-of-shape. I checked my email. I reminded myself that I didn’t join a writing group to check my email and then I forced myself to put a few words on the page.
When we gathered back as a full group, our instructor announced that the next step would be to join a partner in a breakout room so we could share what we wrote (if we wanted).
“Don’t be scared!” she said. “This is a supportive and welcoming way to share your writing.”
I couldn’t “X” out of that session fast enough. I slammed my laptop shut and started doing my laundry instead.
The idea of sharing my messy, clunky words with another living, breathing human with two functioning ears sounded more uncomfortable than skinny dipping in the Arctic Ocean.
I’m having a hard enough time just trying to write a few messy words and now you want me to share them, too?
There is no way in hell my perfectionism would let me do that.
Last week, I attended my second generative writing workshop. We went through the same routine, but got sucked into the new poems, which left us with just seven minutes to write.
When I heard “seven minutes to write,” panic set in. It takes me several times that long to find my way to one word these days. (How many minutes are there in 12 months? That’s about how much time I need.)
But I know that the best way to write is to (just fucking) write. So, I told myself to (just fucking) write something. Anything! It didn’t have to be great. Or even good! They could be the worst words of my life. The goal, in fact, was to not strive for good! The goal was to let it be bad. To write through the discomfort and not worry about the quality of what came out.
It’s okay to be messy, I whispered to myself. Messy is what you want. Messy is how you find your way back to writing.
I reread the prompt and then I wrote 54 words. Because I was so strapped for time, I wrote something that was more poem(?) than prose and I felt like a total imposter because the extent of my poetry writing as an adult has been ghostwriting haikus for my dog.
When it came time to do the breakout session with a partner, I gave myself a pep talk.
Don’t touch that X, Emily. You don’t have to share what you wrote. You can just talk about how writing is hard! But stay in it. You have to keep going through the clunky, hard, uncomfortable part.
So, I stayed on the zoom call. And got sorted into a room with a woman who said a warm hello, introduced herself, and asked, “Do you want to share?”
I stammered and stalled and spit out something along the lines of, “Oh, you know, seven minutes, I barely wrote, it’s bad, seven minutes, bad, you know? Bad.”
She, a much more courageous writer than I, enthusiastically offered to read what she’d written.
Then she circled back, “Are you sure you don’t want to share?”
I stared back at her and thought about how much I want to write again. And how the only way I can do that is if I let myself be messy and launch small acts of defiance against the nasty perfectionism that’s been such a hindrance.
“Okay,” I said. I took a deep breath. “I’ll read what I wrote.”
I slowly read the words I’d strung together. My partner was the best audience. Nodding and snapping as I went. She definitely didn’t boo or hiss or throw virtual tomatoes at me or whatever else I feared would happen.
When the last word left my mouth, I was surprised by how I felt.
I wasn’t drowning in shame. I didn’t implode from letting someone else bear witness to my trash words. The messiness of it all didn’t ruin my life or my writing.
Instead, it was emboldening to let myself be gloriously imperfect. It was freeing to embrace the roughness of my words and celebrate it as an essential part of writing.
Not to deem myself too much of a hero for reading 54 words to an audience of one, but telling my perfectionism to F off, in big and tiny ways, is exactly what my writing practice needs right now. It was a bit like flicking on a flashlight and seeing that the dark isn’t so scary after all. So, the next time the lights are out, maybe you’re a little braver and more comfortable. I could feel that it was definitely not something I should be running away from or X-ing out of, it’s exactly what I should be chasing.
So when my reading partner repeated a phrase from my poem-type-thing and asked: “Can you read that again?”
I read it again, appreciating that the words came a little easier the second time around. And when I left the session a few minutes later, I opened up another blank word document and kept writing.
In the spirit of writing > perfect writing, I plan to dust off this newsletter and share many more words and stories on Substack in the coming weeks and months. I hope you stick around/join me.
In other writing around the internet, I wrote a super fun story for Outside Run this week about one of the most ridiculous running competitions in the history of running. If you’re sick of doomscrolling and want to read something light and fun, this story is a good one for that.
Emily your writing is topnotch and thought provoking. Sharing your struggles like that can help many many people. Keep up your great work. Your Mom is looking down and beaming with pride. We all love you.