Writing is hard. That is an unfortunate fact. And like many kids growing up, it was the reason I hated it. I hated the long arduous process of outlining and piecing a message together. I hated the idea of spending an infinite amount of time on something that still held no guarantee of perfection. It wasn't like a math problem which stood on the premise of having only one correct answer. Rather, with writing, there were endless possibilities of what a finished piece could look like. Searching for the perfect form was like searching for a needle in the haystack. This fact overwhelmed the perfectionist inside of me. The five paragraph format that was often pushed in school did not help either. Rather than feeling safe and structured, I only felt constricted. It was as if my writing had to be pushed and configured into five points. 

 

So, in terms of my writing development, this stage was burdened with discontentment, nuisance and frustrations. At this stage, I managed to identify many of my disagreements with writing. I would spend the next three stages beginning to resolve these disagreements in order to get closer to finding "Jo".