This is just an idea I came across while blogging this week. Many times, we pressure ourselves to write beautiful, literary, vivid, compelling tales on our first try—our first attempt at a manuscript, or our first draft. We let that blank page sit there while we search for a fresh, creative way to express that our character is tall/short/angry/sad/sarcastic/etc.
Note to self (and everyone else): stop it. Stop worrying about getting it right—nay, getting it perfect—on that first attempt.
The purpose of drafting is not to write it all down in its final, publishable form. The purpose of drafting is to write it all down.
The fact is that pretty much no one writes a perfect first draft. The skill of writing is seldom found in the drafting. It’s found in the stick-to-it-iveness to rewrite, the skill to identify the basic and clichéd and to search for a new way to say it—but not at the detriment of actually getting it all on the page.
One of my critique partners put this really well after her husband imparted some priceless advice (emphasis added):
“You also can’t make chicken salad out of an invisible chicken.” Then, after dispensing this tidbit worthy of Confucius, he went off to watch ESPN. I sat in stunned silence. This made it so clear to me! He was right of course. I can’t fix something or make it what I want if it’s still in my head. It was his nice way of telling to quit whining and write the darn thing down.
So we all now have my permission: draft lazy. Use clichés and trite expressions if you can’t think of anything better quickly. If you can’t find the “right” word on the tips of your fingers (or with a quick thesaurus & dictionary check), use the wrong-but-close one. (Feel free to mark anywhere you do this so you remember to fix it later.)
Is this just making more work for yourself in the revision process? Maybe—but then again, you can’t revise and perfect something you haven’t written yet.
What do you think? Do you draft lazy?
Photo by Matt Majewski
Not only do I draft lazy, or at least try, but sometimes I purposefully draft garbage. If my internal editor is getting in the way of my muse, I chase him off by writing the sappiest, most awful, cliche-filled prose I can hack out.
Then, once I’ve started writing, I can usually keep going with passable first-draft quality stuff.
You just now had this epiphany?
You’ve never heard of “turn off your inner editor”?
(sorry–just a bit shocked)
This is why I love NaNoWriMo so much…because it’s not about the story, it’s about the words. It’s about getting words down on paper, 1667 a day, not matter what (although I shoot for 3000+).
I’ve also come to a conclusion that the first draft is 100% throwaway. It’s just a very detailed outline. It is so much better to re-write a scene than to try to edit a first draft (esp a lazy first draft).
Therefore to spend extra time on the draft getting wording and metaphors and descriptions just right is a waste of time, because more often than not you’re going to throw out the scene anyways. So by drafting really quickly, you get extra time to work on revision. Of course if you do have a good idea, write it down, but don’t get bogged down on getting everything right.
I wrote my 80K word first draft in 25 days.
🙂
The “draft lazy” phrase is a new idea, not the concept. To me it’s not the same as turning off the inner editor, but I can see the parallels. (The only time my inner editor interferes is when I’m reading for pleasure, anyway, but most people describe this as the paralyzing fear that they’re not good enough to write anything, not stopping to find the right words.)
On the other hand, I don’t think that the purpose of drafting is to write as much crap as possible. It definitely hasn’t been my experience that “more often than not” I throw out a scene, or that the first draft is 100% throwaway. I’d find that depressing.
I revise a lot and toss or combine scenes frequently, but for me there’s a balance in the first draft—I’m not trying to make it perfect, but I’m not just getting through this as fast as I can just so I have to do it all over again.
Well maybe I was exaggerating…I didn’t mean to imply that I just put random words down. I try my best to stick to the story, but at the same time, I have it in the back of my head that it’s just throwaway, kind of like how an artist may sketch out a painting with pencil on paper before committing it to canvas. For me the first draft is a sketch of the story, without the vibrant colors and detail that the final version will have.
I challenge you to try this: take a random chapter and delete it. Then rewrite it. then compare it to the original. I will bet you anything that if you showed the two versions to people, most would prefer the newer version.
I’m not even going to pretend I wrote anything usable in my first draft. If I did, then my mind will somehow recreate it in the next draft.
Mm, I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave.
No, seriously, when I’ve had to replace writing—even a first draft—it never seems as good. Somehow it’s less fresh—it feels like a shadowy, imitative copy of something that used to be halfway decent (kind of the opposite of the process you describe, LOL). I’d prefer to take the laziness out of a draft than to rewrite it from scratch. I am firmly, irrationally convinced and the mere thought of rewriting something gives me heart palpitations.
(Plus, I don’t have anything that I’ve drafted recently enough to do that.)
But if it works for you, awesome!
But I was hoping you were speaking hyperbolically about tossing that much! I thought you were an in-depth plotter 😉 .
Well, let’s look at it from this angle:
What I’m doing is writing another first draft. This time, with the right characters and setting, and a fully thought-out plot.
Revising that is a heck of a lot easier, because then I can focus on just style etc.
If you’re interested, I can send you a couple re-written chapters…you’ll see how the first is kind of lifeless and the second jumps off the page.
BTW I think the expression you wanted was “in hyberbole”, not “hyperbolically”. But I’m not, I really plan to toss everything out. By keeping the first draft around you’re committing to something that might not be working.
I wonder why your rewrites don’t shine as much. I don’t believe that’s the common experience.
Good advice here, to get it down on paper and worry about revising later. When I first start writing, I did the opposite and it took forever go get anything written.
Definitely draft lazy (sometimes I rewrite lazy LOL). I think my biggest hurdle is the gap between my head and the keyboard. I tend to “draft” entire chapters while out running, they are always so clear in my head, yet when I go to write them down I lose a lot because I try and get all the great details I have in my head down and the essence of the “draft” slips away into the morass… sigh. Still working on it.
I definately don’t draft lazy. I write a draft as full as I can and then edit and revise but almost never rewrite. My first drafts are full of my voice. My rewrites are dull and lifeless. Not only that I get bored with it and the rewrite is never as good as the first draft. That’s not to say my first drafts are perfect. The grammar and spelling as well as setting are definately lacking. But it is so much easier to add setting and description and fix the grammar etc. than to rewrite the whole scene. For some reason, I lose my voice in rewriting.
However I have seen writing friends who struggle to open the document for the exact reason you state wanting it to be perfect that first time. Interesting blog post Jordan definately food for thought.