meticulous \muh-TIK-yuh-luhs

meticulous \muh-TIK-yuh-luhs\adjective: Extremely or excessively careful about details.

Meticulous is the word of the day on dictionary.com. I am one of those nerdy types that subscribes to such lists and on first look today I never considered that muh-TIK-yuh-luhs applied to me. Ask anyone, my wife, my kids, my boss!

Thats not to say I'm sloppy with details or dont care. What I mean is that I'm NOT extremely or excessively careful about details, which I have to admit, does lead to my downfall at times.

But then I had an epiphany (another word I need to add to my list of favourites). Cleaning out the bag I take to and from work I came across a number of computer discs I had forgotten about. So I loaded them up and checked out what files were there. Most of them were work files but a large number were snippets of or actual stories I had written over the past three years. Not to blow my own trumpet (but I will) a lot of it was not actual crap!

Here is the epiphany in regards to being meticulous. I am meticulous when I write. Wow big deal you say. You should be you say. But what I realised is that I espect my writing to be perfect on the first run through. I am meticulous in my draft writing. I never thought I was. I thought I had heeded all the advice from my writing teachers, fellow scribes and the literature. The simple fact is that I spend hours agonising, sweating blood on the perfect opening line, making sure all the punctuation and grammar is meticulous on the first run through!

So I have not been suffering writers block at all. I have been suffering from being too damn meticulous! So bring on the sloppy first draft! I'm back in the writing game!