If you’re anything like me, this doesn’t come naturally. And it became especially difficult once I started learning writing rules because I didn’t want to break a single one of them. I wanted to be perfect from the get-go so editing would be a breeze.
A nice idea, but it never works out that way. Regardless of how long I spend on my first drafts, editing – or editing well, anyway – always takes a long time.
The first time I heard about writing lousy first drafts was in my high school English class when we read Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. She says, “In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really [bad] first drafts.”
And I’ve found this to be completely true for me as well. Otherwise I sit there and put a tremendous amount of pressure on myself to not only write, but to WRITE WELL.
Anne later says, “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something – anything – down on paper.”
A few years ago I was writing a first draft, and it wasn’t going well. I was totally stuck on something (I don’t remember what), and I would just stare at my blinking cursor for what felt like hours. When I complained about this to my husband, he said, “Why don’t you try just writing?” To which I gave him a you’re-an-engineer-and-can’t-possibly-know-what-you’re-talking-about look and said, “What do you mean?” And he said, “You know. Just get the ball rolling, and you’ll figure it out as you go.”
I’d forgotten it was okay to write a horrible first draft, and because of that, I’d been stuck for days. I followed my husband’s advice and had a finished draft in a matter of weeks.
It can be easy to think to yourself that no “real” writer writes bad first drafts. That’s just not true.
Anne Lamott says, “I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her.”
Don’t be afraid to let that first draft be bad.