Futzing

True crime writer Anthony Flacco, whose 2009 book The Road Out of Hell has received wide praise (http://www.anthonyflacco.com/), gave a nice presentation at the recent Eighth Annual Spring Writer's Festival at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, where he encouraged us to "Write, rinse, repeat." A riff on the longstanding advice that every-day writing is a must for the successful writer, he encouraged us to write at least two pages every day, then review and revise those two pages the next day ("rinse") before turning out two more pages (repeat). The advice was sound and clever enough that three weeks later it comes to mind with ease.

I find it all very hard to do. The initial writing, of course, can be difficult to the point of pain. That part is bad enough, but every day when I get to Flacco's "rinse" step, I lose myself. I fondle the words I have strung together, juggle them, admire them, kill some quickly and some with long drawn out regret, resurrect a few then place them in Limbo at the bottom of the manuscript with hopes of using them again, somewhere, somehow. I am like a dog with a smelly bone, rolling around on this debris-pile of words I want to hold, to keep, marking them as mine, burying them for that time when they will be needed and be brilliant.

My Mom would have told me I was futzing, and she would have been right. The truth of the matter is, I enjoy reading what I wrote, and I enjoy reworking it. Is this true of all writers, or am I some freak? And why is it so much easier to "rinse" then it is to "write?" I need a cure for futzing. Can anyone out there help me move on?