Why first drafts are supposed to be bad
The first draft is not the finished piece. It is the raw material. Treating it that way takes the pressure off.
Many people stop writing because their first attempt is poor. They read it and conclude they are not good at this. It is a mistake about what a first draft is for.
A draft is a discovery#
A first draft is where you find out what you think. Ideas that were fuzzy in your head become sentences, and some of the sentences turn out to be wrong. That is useful information, but you can only get it by writing.
The writer Anne Lamott gives these drafts a blunt name in her book Bird by Bird, and says every good writer has them. The point is permission: you are allowed to make something rough.
Separate making from judging#
The hardest part is that making and judging use different parts of your attention. If you judge each sentence as you write it, you stall. Nothing is good enough to keep.
So split the work in two:
- First, make. Write fast. Do not stop to fix. If you cannot think of a word, type a placeholder and move on.
- Then, judge. Come back later and read it with a cool eye. Now you can cut, reorder and polish.
A trick for getting started#
Set a timer for twenty minutes and write without stopping. Do not go back. When the timer ends, stop and look at what you have. Almost always there is something in it, a sentence or an idea, that you could not have planned.
What a bad draft gives you#
- Material. You cannot edit a blank page.
- A shape. Seeing the whole thing, even badly, shows what is missing.
- Momentum. A finished rough draft is much easier to improve than an unfinished perfect one.
Expect the first draft to be bad. It means you are doing it correctly. The good version comes from the second, and the third.