Allowing myself to write pure shit in a first draft is still the most difficult part of the game for me. I've little doubt that it'll be the same in another 20 years.

(And ok let's get it out of the way: it could be argued that I also write shit final drafts, so there's no big deal if the first one sucks too.)

It is, however, different now than it once was: whereas before this anti-shitness stemmed from a useless perfectionism and fear, it stems now (I think) from a lack of faith in and an impatience with my own abilities to get it right, eventually – this, in spite of knowing that my fragmented and "throw shit 'n' shards at wall and iterate iterate iterate into something resembling coherence" method has been proven to work – unless you're of the second paragraph persuasion (which I sometimes am) but if you are then I question your reasoning for continuing to read this blog; life's too short for hate reading).

While this isn't a space for me to dispense advice – I have none – it is a space for me to remind myself of potential avenues of exploration (read: de-shittifying myself): I wonder how my mindset would change if I approached things from a hybrid of my "iterate / shit 'n'shards" method and the workflow learned (for better or for worse) during my orchestral performance days: sight-read a new piece, iterate, improve, improve, iterate, suck, iterate, improve, perform, start over.

(The first draft being the sight-reading.)

Then again, maybe that's what I'm doing now, IDK – not like anyone's going to scream at me and tell me to be intimate with my cymbals if I fuck up.

Probably.