When I code, the computer tells me when I’m wrong. When I write, no one does. I can never be sure where I stand. I just have to write what comes, and let it fall here.

“I prefer compilers to editors,” Bjarne Stroustrup told me once. He invented the computer language C++, so he should know. “With compilers there are no gray areas. It either works or it doesn’t.”

I’ve been a coder for more than half my life, but I’ve been a writer far longer. But not a fearless writer. When I code, I break things. I break everything. But then I fix one thing, and then another, and suddenly, it all works! When I write, I try not to break anything. I’m sooooo careful. I want perfection the first time. The black letters and words and sentences that appear on the white screen need to be golden at birth, sparkling with wit and ingenuity. And smell like lilacs.

There’s a safety in coding that you slip out of when you write. Coders swim laps in a dimly lit gym basement pool. A writer surfs the tide of truth and non-truth, of exaggeration, of delusion. A writer battles the wild wind. (Writers can turn purple at any moment.)

The parallels to improvising strike me. When you play over a tune, inventing melodies on the spot, you pull them up and toss them out. What comes, comes, and you can’t expect anything. There’s no rewriting in improvisation. There’s only see what happens next, and live with it.

I’m posting this today in an effort to publish first, judge never. Words on paper count. Period. It’s not like you’re gonna tell me I’m wrong.