Treat your day like a series of shitty first drafts
Reset and edit to make the day you want
In 1994 I read Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird and was introduced to the idea of shitty first drafts. This was a revelation to me. I had considered myself smart but I had failed, despite countless novels and biographies of writers read, to puzzle out the simple fact that the first thing written is rarely perfect. Lamott would contend, perhaps, that it is never perfect.
This simple knowledge removed one of the major blocks I had long faced in writing: I didn’t have to like — or even care much about — the first words I got down. My models had been Joyce and Beckett and Lowry and Lawrence. I compared their finished work to my first scratchings. I expected art to emerge fully formed on the page in the way that Athena emerged from the head of Zeus.
Acceptance of imperfection is one of the most liberating things you can do for yourself.
But it applies to more than writing. I find that I now try to reset and start my day when I find it’s not going the way I expected. Instead of pressing the ‘fuck it’ button — a habit most associated with my drinking days — and taking the slightest setback as an excuse for a self-indulgent and self-sabotaging rampage, I simply regard the moment as a shitty first draft and set to editing.
What’s important with this is to realise what you can and cannot control. A delayed train? Not something you can influence. But what you can influence is the reaction to it. The choice is to huff and puff on the platform and abuse a member of station staff or to be grateful that there is more time to read on the journey to work.
Shitty first drafts, then, work on and off the page. Editing them is a skill that carries over from writing into the rest of your life.
Equally, knowing when to stop editing and call it a wrap is as vital to a healthy day as it is to getting your stuff out there.
Go forth and edit your day.
