When I first got a notebook, thanks to the made up “histories” on the packaging, I believed everything I wrote should be perfect.  Nay, would be perfect.

While this attitude is obviously stupid, I didn’t even realize I was doing it.  None the less, I was holding myself to a standard of perfection.  It was paralyzing!  And when I went back to look at what I did write when I finally mustered the courage to put pen to page?  Crushing.

My Notebook was left undisturbed for quite a while after that.

Then one day, as if I was being original, the idea struck… a rough draft!

This, coupled with the nature of my job at the time caused the Spartan to be born.
At this point I would write things in a Spartan then copy them into my Notebook later.  Thankfully, it didn’t take me long to realize there was a problem.  Sadly, it took me way too long to figure out what the problem was.

Things were different.  My funny stories were less funny.  My impassioned diatribes were reduced to pessimistic rants, written robotically.  My writing was flat.  Any charm that had been there was replaced by big words.  Any emotion or enthusiasm was replaced by rigid sentence structure.

Looking back now it seems obvious that I was doing a bad job of copying!  I was keeping too little and throwing out personality.

I’m not going to say that after realizing this my writing became perfect or even good.  I will say this, my enjoyment grew.  I liked writing and now I enjoyed it too!  And when I looked back at what I had wrote, I enjoyed that too.  Was it good writing?  Probably not, but I enjoyed it.  Since I enjoyed it, I did it more often.  Writing more often afforded me the practice it takes to get better.

Obviously, I do believe in Assessment.  I believe that, when done properly, it is the fastest method for getting your writing and therefore your Notebooking to where you want it to be.  I, also, believe in rough writing.  This is precisely why we recommend only assessing every few weeks.

Do yourself and your writing a favor, embrace the imperfect.  That’s where your wit and your charm live!