False Starts · 7 November 2026
Have you ever started writing and the writing goes nowhere? Yeah. Me neither. Still. It is frustrating and annoying when it happens.
I have been writing for about fifteen minutes or so this morning and gotten nothing done toward my blog. Okay. Not quite true. I started on two pieces (three if you count this one) and nothing yet. Which is not quite true. I had two false starts. I wrote a couple paragraphs on each of the other two pieces and that was it. Nothing else. Oh, not that the words were not coming. (Remember, I claim that there is no such thing as writer’s block.) No. It was that the words were not exciting. They were not really a blog post. Or at least not very long ones. And they were not complete ones either. So they were not going to get shipped. At least not in their current state. Which is okay.
The reason that false starts are okay to me is that they are starts. Oh sure. They do not get to the finish line. At least not on that day, but they are beginnings. And as Mary Poppins says, “Beginning is half done.” Or something like that. (If you believe the internet, somebody in antiquity said those words or something like them long before Mary Poppins.)
(I am beginning to think that this post might become a false start too. Then again, there is something to this piece. I am not sure what it is. After all, I just seem to be following some stream of consciousness. I am just writing and backspacing and writing some more. Who knows where it will end?)
As I think of false starts, I think of all the blog posts that are sitting in my document below the actual blog posts. There are lots of them. According to my writing software, about three-hundred pages worth. Which is about three-hundred blogs posts that did not make the cut or did not get finished or ended up being out of date. Three-hundred. I cannot really even imagine that. I actually have almost a year’s worth of blog posts that did not make the cut. That is quite amazing. A downer. But still, amazing.
Okay. That is not true. It is not a downer to me that I have over three-hundred blog posts that will not see the light of day. It is not a downer to me because it means that I have been writing. And half-written is more than half done. Really. For half-written means that something is getting down on paper. Something is getting out of the mind and into some document. Something is being created. And that is a good thing. For creativity is what blogging is all about for me. It is getting those words out somewhere. It is creating words and thoughts that somebody might appreciate. And even the half-finished thoughts that will never see the light of day have done something for me. They are reminders that I am forever working at my craft. And when we work at our craft, we will not always create masterpieces. Indeed, we may never create a masterpiece. I know I have not. And that is okay. For we just keep creating. Hoping that maybe one piece of writing will inspire somebody.
Okay. Nobody is probably ever going to be inspired by my writing. But they might appreciate my perseverance. For I have written through the years and posted something each week. And maybe that is worth something. I know that it is for me. It is worth all the false starts that I had today and all of the false starts that I have had since I started blogging.
© 2026 Michael T. Miyoshi
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