The freedom to take shitty first drafts to a new level of shittiness
I am reliably informed that one of the UK’s best crime novelists produces shitty first drafts.
This is not surprising in and of itself. What perhaps is surprising is that these shitty drafts take shitty first drafts to a new level. The writer’s editor — for it is from her that this potential calumny originates — is of the opinion that these first drafts are possibly the shittiest going.
This is great news.
For one thing, I watched a programme about this author some time ago and felt his approach to first drafts was commendable.
This writer gives us the permission to turn our backs even more resolutely on the demands of perfectionism.
(Quite what the editor was doing reading these first drafts is worrying but possibly besides the point. I can only assume that at some stage in their relationship, she said to him, “You know, I’d really like to see a first draft, just to watch the process evolve.” He showed her and she now regrets it, I’m sure.)
When I read Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird over 20 years ago, the notion of shitty first drafts was liberating. But still….. I believed that the first draft — however shitty — had to somewhere down the road to perfectville.
Mad, I know. But I believed the least that was expected (by whom?) would be coherent and complete. When I thought of shitty I was stuck in notions of prose quality. I did not think holes and filler were part of a shitty first draft.
Which, now that I have learned a bit of realism, I can see was always going to cause me problems.
So, understanding how this — very successful — crime writer puts a first draft together has finally given me permission to accept that a shitty first draft can also — and, in fact, most probably will — contain sections that say things like “stuff goes here” and “more about the character’s ingrown toenail” and “describe the melons in greater detail” and “can people really do that while singing?”.
That is liberating to a new degree. I shall now cheer loudly.
Whoop whoop huzzah. (I can be louder but it’s late here.)
This takes the pressure off even more for next Saturday’s deadline. I am cruising. Oh yeah.
Go forth and first draft the hell out of your work.
