The First Draft

In Bird by Bird, Anne LaMott calls it "the shitty first draft" to remind herself that it doesn't need to be perfect. There are stages in the writing process and if they get mixed up, it can be disasterous, leading to the dreaded Writer's Block.

The first draft is a pouring out. If you keep your hand or fingers moving as quickly as possible, the words fly past the critic and editor in your head and they let the child play. This can lead to that sublime state of consciousness known as "being in the flow." Amazing things can happen.

Other times it's like puking. Just puke it out. It's okay. Nobody ever needs to see that shitty first draft.

The reason why you have to just do it is because if you wait for perfection or divine inspiration, your novel (or other piece of writing) will never get written. It will never exist in actuality, but only in that dreamy fantasyland of the imagination. It may feel real there, but it's not really real if it's not in a form that can be shared with other people.

Writers write. (What a concept!) There's just no way of getting around it. If you want it to be in a form that others can read, you have to get the words down on paper.

It's like creating clay out of thin air. Once you see the clay in front of you, then you can begin to fashion it into something closer to that vision in your mind. And sometimes you'll create things that will blow your mind out of this galaxy.

After the first draft comes the second draft, but try to get the entire first draft down before starting the second draft, otherwise you may end up in the dreaded, never-ending cul-de-sac of the first few chapters, revising until the end of days those first few chapters that eventually die in the womb like a miscarriage.

When you finish your shitty first draft, then you know what you have. It may look hideous at first, but aren't babies slimy, bloody, and shriveled when they first come out? Then, in time, they become precious little miracles.

But they can never exist without all the stages that came before that moment of wonderment and new life.