To be had, and srown away

There's no time to look it up, for there are chocolate bunnies and assorted hot cross buns to be bought, Aged Ps to visit and yet more Australia Post bags of books to open and sort, but somewhere in one of Helen Garner's essays (I think) is a discussion of how important it is, when planning to write or make something, to have a plan -- but how easy it then becomes for you to be ensnared by the plan, and to be unable to see beyond it to different possibilities. She once had a Polish friend, said Garner, whose opinion of plan-making was as follows: 'A plan is to be had, and srown away.'

I think of this dictum often, and in many different situations. It has been of particular help to me in the cut and thrust of blog thread discussions, especially on big group blogs. For there are some regular commenters whom one knows by now to be a bit bonkers, and engaging in protracted debate with them is never a good idea.

Lately I have been trying harder and harder to avoid getting into it with certain of these people, even when they post comments into which one is truly desperate to sink one's teeth. What works in this situation is exactly the same technique as the letter or email that you write and do not send. Writing it is not only cathartic, but it forces you to articulate clearly what it is that you actually think, and sometimes it even turns out that it was that act of articulation -- rather than the fight itself -- that you were longing for.

And I've written three different blog comments this morning that I've then deleted without posting, either because I've resisted engaging unproductively with someone, or because I know that what I have to say will bring down dreadful abuse upon my head. But that's fine. They were comments to be had, and srown away.