You might have guessed from reading my posts—or if you’ve seen it in blog form on my website—that I love to write. It’s been a lifelong habit. As a kid, I wrote and illustrated more than 80 comic episodes for my sister, and filled notebooks with stories and mini books. One even won a regional award long ago.
Over time, I’ve learned something essential about the creative process, and it’s advice I now share with my own kids when they get stuck: give yourself permission to make it messy.
I mean it. Write the clunkiest first draft of an essay you can imagine. Sketch a tree that looks nothing like a tree. Say out loud: This might not be perfect—and that’s okay. Because once you get started, you realize it wasn’t a lack of ideas holding you back—it was fear. Fear that it wouldn’t be perfect, fear that others might reject it. But that rough version? That’s the seed. You come back, improve it, reshape it—and that’s how something meaningful begins to grow.
I’ve seen this same truth in action over the years working with my fellow councilmembers. Good policy rarely comes from one person working in isolation. The best outcomes come when we open up a first draft—yes, even a rough one—for discussion. We gather input from our community, staff, administration, and together we make it better.
Sometimes, an idea sounds perfect on paper. But then we hear from the people who will implement it or be affected by it, and we learn what needs to change. Occasionally, a policy with the best of intentions just doesn’t work in practice—or worse, has unintended consequences. That’s why it’s so important to stay open to feedback, to revisit and revise, and to treat policy the way I treat writing: start with something, even if it’s rough. Then commit to making it better.
Because the goal isn’t perfection from the start—it’s progress through collaboration.
Amy McHenry for Duvall Mayor 