Bull, Baloney, and the Crap Draft

This article was originally written for Fairfield County Writers, now Full Coverage Writers.

Writing a novel is a huge undertaking, a serious and terrifying commitment that can eat years of your life.

So forget about writing a novel. All you need to write now is a draft. The rough draft. The "crap draft." I like that name best. It tells you exactly what to expect from that first draft of your brilliant novel.

It's the crap draft because you are going to screw it up. Let's just put that out there now. Whether it's your first novel, your third, or your seventeenth, your first draft is not going to be pretty.

Write it anyway. You have to write it. Get it down. Get it done. As Ms. Frizzle said, "Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!"

All well and good to say just write, isn't it? Telling you to "just do it" doesn't get you anywhere but staring frozen at a blinking cursor. What you need are techniques.

Well, there are lots of them out there, and guess what? They are pretty much the same as the ways to get around writer's block. Because writer's block, and writing (too) slowly, redoing the first chapter again and again, fixing everything before you move on, are two aspects of the same thing—fear. You're afraid to get it wrong. You're afraid to mess up. You're afraid to be laughed at for your typo-filled first draft.

Get over it. Writing well—digging deep and pulling the reality out of your characters to splash there on the page—takes real courage. Getting published—sending your precious work out there into the world to hear back time and time again that it's "not for me" takes serious cajones. Editing—oh my. If you have not edited before, you cannot even begin to imagine the guts needed for editing. It is a glorious, tedious, terrifying process, and without tons of faith and courage, you will not make it. So start developing that courage now. Dare to screw up.

"I'm not afraid. I just want to make it the best I can, and that takes time."

Baloney. Well—I know one person who writes like this. She mulls over stories forever before she starts to write them, and then she types as fast as she can, and her story is utterly brilliant, requiring very little editing, and almost ready to go. She's the only one I know who works like that. Every single other person who has told me this (and I talk to a lot of writers) has left the "perfect first draft" idea behind them as they grew in their craft.

So. Baloney. You will be coming back to it to edit. You will know more about your story and your craft when you do. Write it. Leave it. Move on.

"I was taught that if I can't do it right, I shouldn't do it at all."

Bull. That's what editing is for, and even that—well, I have great admiration for Holly Lisle's techniques. I think I've even promoted the idea of using her one-pass revision. When I did, I should have said "but." It's called "one-pass" BUT. Don't expect to do it in one go. I like the method because the improvement, one draft to the next, is incredible. Not because in one pass I have a saleable manuscript--I don't. As I tell anyone who asks and some who don't—Holly Lisle can do it in one pass. I need more.

"I'm going to have to fix it. I might as well do it now."

Well, no. You might as well not. When you spend too much time on one scene, you lose precious momentum. You lose that tenuous view in your head of the whole book, the whole story, and you lose coherency because you are too focused. Let it go. Type "Need more emotion here!!" and move on. (This is the ONLY time you may express your frustration in extra punctuation—because then when you are editing, you can use search to find those spots and fix them.)

"If I don't have time to do it right, how will I find time to do it over?"

This is how writing works. You will go over it at least twice more, and probably more than that—if you ever finish it at all. And if you don't get a move on, you probably never will finish.

In every article, I try to present a range of options. We are all different, and what works for one won't work at all for another. This is the exception. I can tell you what it takes to finish a first draft because I've done it ten times now, and it takes the same things from all of us. Things we can simply choose to have.

It takes courage, and persistence, and a dash (at least) of madness. Dare to write. Dare to screw up.

Who dares, wins.

Now go write.

*Chris Baty is the founder of NaNoWriMo. Ms. Frizzle is the science teacher in the Magic School Bus series. Both are worth your time to investigate.