The Cowardice of Writing in the Shower

I'm a good editor. So good, in fact, that I think I'm editing myself right out of a job.

I can edit 500 words down to 250. Edit a photo into an all-new image. I can edit myself down to two inches tall. Or at least that's how it feels.

For the past few years I've told everyone, myself included, that I'm not a writer; I'm an editor. After years of being a pretentious teenager, giving myself a pen name and swapping poetry with friends, I gave up. Writing articles, it turned out, was nothing like writing poetry. Nothing like wading in the puddles of my shower waiting for words to dawn on me, as if falling from the shower head into my own. So for years, I've spared myself the discomfort of sitting in front of my computer and writing. But nonetheless, in the shower, with my guard down ever-so-slightly, those darned words come back. And I think I'm starting to figure out why.

I can't commit things to paper in the shower. There's no blank page, no blinking cursor that may as well be a tapping foot. I can't write anything down, so I certainly can't edit it. I have to go with my first blurt, and don't things always sound better on first blurt? I know they always sound better in my head.

In the shower I write like I fantasize: rewind, play, rewind, fast forward. Anna Wintour's coming toward me at a party. Fast forward: headlines say NataLee is surpassing old newsstand favorites. Rewind: I'm saying something unbearably cheeky. Fast forward: I'm in a conference room in front of a blown-up cover image, rallying my troops. Rewind. Fast forward. Rewind. Play. Lede. Body. Nutgraf. Lede.

It doesn't matter how ridiculous or implausible it is. It doesn't matter that I have no intention of going head-to-head with Vogue at any point in my career. It's all in my head, for heaven's sake, and moreover, it's all in my shower.

My inhibitions have gotten the best of me. I'm using failure as an excuse to stop trying. Well enough of that. If I can't just get over this insipid meekness that's taken over, I'll have to get around it.

So I'm changing my thinking. It looks like I'll have to write before I can edit. Until I'm actually an editor I'm going to stop calling myself one. I'm going back to being a writer--and not just in my shower.