Your first draft is always going to suck
Friday, April 3, 2009 at 10:13PM in Alexandra Sokoloff
It’s an interesting thing about blogging – it’s made us able to get a glimpse of hundreds of people’s lives on a moment-by-moment basis. I don’t have a lot of time (well, more to the point, I have no time at
all) to read other blogs; I can barely keep up with posting to Murderati and my own blog. But I do click through on people’s signature lines sometimes to see what they’re up to; it’s an extension of my
natural writerly voyeurism.
And a certain pattern has emerged with the not-yet-published writers I spy on.
It goes something like this: “My current WIP is stalled, so I’ve been working on a short story.” “I’ve gotten nothing done on my WIP this week.” “I have reached the halfway point and have no idea where to go from here.” “I had a great idea for a new book this week and I’ve been wondering if I should just give up on my WIP and start on this far superior idea.”
Do you start to see what I’m seeing? People are getting about midway through a book, and then lose interest, or have no idea where to go from where they currently are, or realize that a different idea is superior to what they’re working on and panic that they’re wasting their time with the project they’re working on, and hysteria ensues.
So I wanted to take today’s blog to say this, because it really can’t be said often enough.
Your first draft is always going to suck.
I’ve been a professional writer for almost all of my adult life and I’ve never written anything that I didn’t hit the wall on, at one point or another. There is always a day, week, month, when I will lose all interest in the project I’m working on. I will realize it was insanity to think that I could ever write the fucking thing to begin with, or that anyone in their right mind would ever be interested in it, much less pay me for it. I will be sure that I would rather clean houses (not my own house, you understand, but other people’s) than ever have to look at the story again.
And that stage can last for a good long time. Even to the end of the book, and beyond, for months, in which I will torture my significant other for week after week with my daily rants about how I will never be able to make the thing make any sense at all and will simply have to give back the advance money.
And I am not the only one. Not by a long shot. It’s an occupational hazard that MOST of the people I know are writers, and I would say, based on anecdotal evidence, that this is by far the majority experience - even though there are a few people like Rob, here, (or so he SAYS) who revise as they’re going along and when they type “The End” they actually mean it.
Hah. I have no idea what that could possibly feel like.
Even though you will inevitably end up writing on projects that SHOULD be abandoned, you cannot afford to abandon ANY project. You must finish what you start, no matter how you feel about it. If that project never goes anywhere, that’s tough, I feel your pain. But it happens to all of us. You do not know if you are going to be able to pull it off or not. The only way you will ever be able to pull it off is to get in the unwavering, completely non-negotiable habit of JUST DOING IT.
Your only hope is to keep going. Sit your ass down in the chair and keep cranking out your non-negotiable minimum number of daily pages, or words, in order, until you get to the end.
This is the way writing gets done.
Some of those pages will be decent, some of them will be unendurable. All of them will be fixable, even if fixing them means throwing them away. But you must get to the end, even if what you’re writing seems to make no sense of all.
You have to finish.
I’ve had a couple of weeks in which my page marker has not moved past the number 198 because I keep deleting. Nothing I write makes any sense. I don’t have enough characters, I’m not giving the characters I have enough time in these scenes, I have no conception of yacht terminology and am spending hours of my days researching only to find I’m more confused about how things work on a boat than when I started.
I have Hit. The. Wall.
Yeah, yeah, cue World’s Smallest Violin.
Because – so what?
It always happens. I’m not special.
At some point you will come to hate what you're writing. That's normal. That pretty much describes the process of writing. It never gets better. But you MUST get over this and FINISH. Get to the end, and everything gets better from there, I promise. You will learn how to write in layers, and not care so much that your first draft sucks. Everyone's first draft sucks. It's what you do from there that counts.
That is not to say you can't set aside a special notebook and take 15 minutes a day AFTER you've done your minimum pages on the main project, and brainstorm on that other one. I'm a big fan of multitasking.
But working on that project is your reward for keeping moving on your main project.
Finish what you start. It’s your only hope.
- Alex
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Reader Comments (20)
I even have pinned to my wall: "The First Draft is ALWAYS going to suck, but that's okay.
Then my second draft is where the work starts--this one is for the readers (including my editor) so it's where I'll slice and dice and focus on what will make this the best read possible for someone else (after all, I've already had my fun with the first draft )
Not sure if this technique would work for anyone else, but it helps me to both get through the first draft as well as divorce my ego from the revisions necessary to make the second draft shine.
One thing in your post is very clear: you need to go take a cruise on a small yacht, where you can do the research hands-on while enjoying a bit of surf and sun. :)
My group was not amused, and several members continued to write half of stories that had potential; they just didn't want to climb the wall.
I keep a folder on my hard drive called "Story Ideas." Any time I'm interrupted with an idea while in the middle of another project, it goes in there. It's amazing how many of those are garbage when I sit and think hard about them, but would have distracted me from the WIP had I let them.
This is excellent advice. Everyone has a novel in them, but very few people actually can finish one. Stay with it, and listen to Dana's advice - when you have a brilliant idea, tuck it into your idea folder and come back to it. You don't want to be a one hit wonder, after all...
Thanks, Alex.
And J.D., I'm now renaming my office The Slough of Despond.
I do edit as I go, but I ALWAYS get stuck at the beginning of Act II and I ALWAYS do at least one intensive edit/revision after I type THE END. Usually two-- and that doesn't count clean-up.
Before I got serious, the next idea was ALWAYS the better idea. I was such an idea slut. Moving from one to the other with no commitment, just for the thrill of the moment. As soon as the writing got tough, I was so outta there, chasing the next hot-looking idea . . .
And let me know what you need in terms of yacht terminology. I was raised by a feral pack of hardcore sailors, and have the vocab down pretty well (to the extent that no one in my writing group will write about boats anymore, because they don't want me to correct everything).
Almost.
I've got one and only one reason to stop and I'm blogging about it on Monday. (How's that for an obnoxious tease? I should be ashamed . . .)
But I do indeed revise as I go along. This is something I was specifically told NOT to do by the many writing gurus I read and the one or two workshops I took. I should, I was told, write straight through without looking back because I wouldn't get bogged down by details and doubt and would finish the book faster.
Well, I tried. Many times. But I just couldn't do it.
So when I write a novel -- or a screenplay -- I'm constantly revising as I go. And when I type THE END, I'm done except for the editor's notes. Which, fortunately, have always been very few. And I think this is largely because I revise and polish as I go...
This, of course, doesn't mean everyone should do what I do. There are no rules of process. Just what works for YOU.
melanieavila.blogspot.com
Man, I'm late reading entries this month - but I am SO glad I read this!!!
Of course, you realize, I wasn't working on my own WIP because the world's smallest violin (I borrowed yours;) was playing for my stuck-in-the-middle-of-nowhere story.
Instead, I decided to surf Murderati. But see? It helped. I'll head back to my dreaded PC file now. You're researching boats, I'm researching car engines... and I think I'm going to call my Uncle for help.
Good luck!