A number of posts back, a reader asked me to write more about first drafts, and I realized that I prefer writing about first drafts than actually writing one.

Most of us believe that “real” writers simply write their first drafts with ease and dignity and then sail on with great confidence to the second draft.  All I can say from my own experience and that of my writer friends, this is not normally the case.  We all go through anguish and doubt, and that’s okay I tell myself. It keeps us on our toes. It makes us work harder to get where we need to go. 

First drafts are for fooling around, allowing it be a mess, just letting it be, as Anne Lamott says, a shitty first draft. And, depending on whether you’re a fat writer or a skinny writer, the first draft will be too long or too brief. (Though I’m a skinny writer, I somehow manage to make my anemic little first drafts too wordy.)  But you don’t have to love your first draft to continue on. All you have to do is believe in the basic idea that set you off on writing the book in the first place.  You also need to be stubborn.  Being stubborn is probably one of the greatest character traits a writer can have. Dig-your-heels-in and don’t-pay-attention-to-the-odds kind of stubborn.

Continuing on with the first draft of my new novel got so difficult I went back to the beginning to rewrite (which is great fun because you’ve got something to work with), but I realized I couldn’t really revise the beginning until the whole book was finished. So I did Carolyn See’s famous 1,000 words a day exercise.  Every morning I sat down and wrote 1,000 words of continuing plot – writing without thinking or rereading – and when a word didn’t come to me I’d write XX and keep going. I hyperventilated through every one of those 1,000 words. It felt like torture.  It was torture. There I was proving myself to be a bad writer as I reeled off 1,000 words of some of the worst prose you’d ever want to read.

But I finally realized (for about the millionth time) that something magical happens by just setting words down. The words become a trail, they validate this fuzzy dream you have in your head, they make your story real no matter how rough and messy the writing is.  No one will see your first draft. 

I tell myself this over and over.

Hit the Comment button and let us know how you’re doing with your first (or second or which ever) draft you’re working on.