Writing Honestly

I'm pleased that I exceeded my daily writing quota by two thousand words, but I am displeased with a thought I stumbled upon because it scares and challenges something I've believed in strongly, believed in as law until now and this has to do with Stafford's belief about writers block. In terms of writer's block William Stafford used to say, "If you think you have writer's block, then lower your standards." That catch phrase served as a writing compass for me from the time I heard it until today, and I now wonder if that thought is a tad misguided, a tad flippant, and a tad from a guy wrote so much that he didn't fully understand blocks because of his own, earned confidence, a guy who wrote his way out of the goddamns of writing.

I assure you that there is some Stafford-freak out there somwhere who will tell you I have Stafford all wrong, that I don't get him, that the quote is just one of Stafford's many great quotes. To you I say, I know. I assure you that some know it all will come along and say, Well, Stafford does have a point.

I just don't think I am as willing to accept that point the way I once did. Anymore, I think that if you have a block of any kind then you don't "lower your standards." You start writing honestly whether the facts are invented or not. In this I think writers raise the standards because no cheap tricks are tolerated. You are honest to the emotions of the text you write and you write those facts understanding that if you are not honest to them then you have failed. And that failing is not acceptable.