Madison Butchko

I will confess that I’m writing this article because I was struggling to write one—so, naturally, I decided to write about the struggle itself. A form of meta-procrastination. If nothing else, writing about the struggle to write is still writing.

This semester, I told myself I would become a better writer. I came in buoyant, eager, believing that simply writing more would, by some natural process, make me better. At first, it was an invitation—open-ended, full of possibility. After writing for my classes and writing articles, I’m not sure if repetition alone has improved my writing or if I’ve just produced more of it. What does ‘better’ even mean? Is it accuracy, depth, control? Or the ability to make someone pause, rethink, and feel something they hadn’t realized before?

To define what “better” meant, I experimented—testing different approaches. I imagined myself refining my voice, sharpening my sentences, cutting away the excess until every word carried weight. But a thought that feels solid in my head turns vague the moment I try to pin it down. I type, delete, rearrange; convinced that if I manipulate the words just right, they will finally say what I mean. But words resist control. They shift under pressure, refusing to hold their shape.

A professor once told me that writers are either swamp divers or diamond polishers. Swamp divers throw themselves into the tangle of words, unafraid of disorder, pouring everything onto the page without hesitation. Diamond polishers, on the other hand, refine as they go, chiseling each sentence until only the cleanest lines remain. That is me.

So, I leaned into what felt natural—polishing. Planning. If I could structure my writing before I even started, I could avoid the uncertainty. I needed to know where I was going before I began, as if words were a path that had to be mapped in advance. But writing is not a road; it is stepping into a river, cold and rushing, trying to find the current before it carries you away. I told myself that if I planned enough—if I outlined every thought in advance—I could contain the chaos. But structure alone does not create meaning. A rigid plan cannot account for the way a thought evolves as it is written.

Then I tried the opposite. I told myself I would write freely, without hesitation, without backspacing or questioning. I would let the words spill onto the page, unfiltered and raw. But I couldn’t do it. The mess was unbearable. I stood at the edge, looking down into the chaos of language and thought, and I hesitated. Then, as always, I erased it all and started over, drawn back into my old habits—trapped between the need for control and the fear of losing it.

Writing is not just about getting words down; it is about letting them be imperfect, letting them exist before they are fully formed. I sat down to write this article, trying to reflect something meaningful. But meaning is not something you call upon like a well-trained dog. It does not come when summoned, obedient and clear. How am I supposed to extract wisdom from my life on demand? Some moments might have meaning if I press them hard enough, but that does not mean I can force every stray thought into profundity.

But if I spend too much time forcing meaning, I risk stripping the thought of its honesty. I do not want to turn my writing into a performance. When I sit down to write, I feel the weight of expectation: say something deep. But what qualifies as deep? If I dig for something profound, all I find is a bucket of half-formed thoughts and unresolved trauma. And when nothing I write feels like enough—not sharp enough, not moving enough, not necessary enough—I begin to wonder if it is worth writing at all.

That hesitation in my writing mirrors a deeper struggle: the fear that anything less than perfection is failure. If I cannot do something well, I would rather not do it at all. It is not just doubt—it is self-preservation. Perfectionism is not about excellence; it is about control.  If I never put the words down, then I never risk them being inadequate. Instead of allowing myself to write freely, I hover over the page, measuring each sentence before it is even formed. But the fear of doing something poorly does not preserve my ability to do it well—it only ensures that I do not do it at all.

But it is not only failure I fear—it is exposure. I want people to like my writing. No—I want people to like me through my writing. I am not used to this kind of exposure. Writing is new to me. For the past three years, I have been immersed in physics, where precision rules, where problems have definitive answers, and where mistakes are just miscalculations—not reflections of the person solving them. In physics, uncertainty is something to reduce, control, measure. Numbers do not define me; they exist independently, unaffected by who I am. The universe does not care about my voice—it simply is. But writing is different. There are no equations to verify meaning, no formulas to ensure clarity. If someone does not connect with my work, it feels like more than just a rejection of words on a page—it feels like a rejection of me. My writing makes me feel seen, but that also makes me vulnerable.

I cannot get a clear sense of what makes my writing good—or even if it is good at all. I admit that putting my work into the public eye means I want approval, even praise. I used to believe that good writing was whatever received the most validation. But approval is unreliable. When I seek feedback, I am never sure if I am receiving honesty or politeness. Friends will always say they like my writing. Other writers will critique it—but not always in a way that clarifies what works and what doesn’t. Without a reliable metric, I am left uncertain.

Yet, I am not a reliable judge of my own work either. I second-guess every sentence, revising before an idea has even taken shape. The moment I begin, an uninvited critic appears. Is this good? Is this deep enough? Writing, for me, is not a private process. The audience is always there—real or imagined. I start thinking not just about what I think, but about what others will think about what I think. 

This article is a rare instance of continuing forward. Most of the time, I stopped writing altogether, believing I wasn’t good enough. The words on the page never matched the ones in my head, and the gap between intent and execution felt too vast to justify any attempt. Even when I managed to put words down, I found them lacking. I have come to realize that this is not just about writing. This is about how I have approached so much of my life. I have always gravitated toward what comes easily, convincing myself that effort should look like mastery, that struggle is a sign to stop rather than a part of the process. I’ve carried this mindset for too long, and though I am trying to unlearn it, writing is no exception. 

But through writing about why I cannot write, my words have become a mirror, revealing what I could not see before. And in my struggle, I have realized that the only thing left to measure is my own reflection. What metrics remain when I take away external validation? How much of myself do I put into my writing, and how much do I hold back?

So I have had to rethink my definition. Maybe good writing is not about approval at all. Maybe it is about accuracy—not accuracy in fact, but accuracy in expression, taking the things inside my head and placing them onto the page in a way that fully reflects what I mean.

I cannot give this reflection a clear ending because I am still in the middle of it. But I can start with: I want my desire to write to be stronger than my desire to be perfect. I want my words to carry weight, but not so much that they collapse under expectation. I want my words to reach people, to resonate, but not at the cost of losing what makes them mine. I want my voice to reflect not just how I think, but who I am. That is why I continue writing: to see myself more clearly.