Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Yes, your first draft can be crap

The first piece of fiction I ever wrote I dubbed "A Vomit-Inducing Piece of Undeniable Horseshit." It was that bad. No, bad would be too generous a word. It wasn't even readable -- not even for giggles. (Okay, maybe for giggles. I learned to type by learning to write. Some of those early typos are classic. I still type "nads" for "hands" too often.) It still sits in a drawer somewhere, and a version of it on my hard drive -- which I haven't opened in seven years.

First drafts are, by nature, terrible. The first draft is where you vomit all your ideas out on the page (in fact, some writers call their first drafts the "vomit" draft). It doesn't have to be pretty. It shouldn't be pretty. (If it is, I don't want to know you.) But there still those times when you're writing something, so wretched you wonder if it's even worth continuing. I found this thread on a writer's forum discussing first drafts. It's a good read if you need the reassurance that it's okay to write crap.

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