My tendency is to edit out the softness. If a statement is not blanketed in an array of facts, examples and evidence then it is not as valid. Rigid. It must be rigid, otherwise it is not presentable. It’s as if I try to take the humanness out of writing. Writing– which is the one of the few things that separate us from other creatures. Or at least a record of the difference (the difference being, of course, consciousness).

I think that is what I have been doing in my work. I have been predicting future paragraphs (the writing, the reading, the reaction) before they’re even written– and then deciding that no, I do not want to write them.

Another thing that I do when I write is I say, “I think” or “perhaps” as a guarantee that I can never be wrong, because I never really said anything for sure. Having this layer of doubt encrypted in writing is not really problematic, but it annoys me. Because I know more than I come across as knowing, why can’t I just claim the knowledge?