In the Beginning, Ya Just Don't Have to be PerfecK
A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF A SH*TTY FIRST DRAFT.
While I was writing last week's blog post, I thought, "I write way toooooo slow to be a blogger!"
Blogging is supposed to be the thing I do in-between teaching Family of Writers and writing a real live actual book. Last week, it took me six hours to write one post, and I still missed some typos.
One of my mentors, Jennie Nash (who hasn't missed her weekly blog posts for years while also running a book coaching business, Author Accelerator) says she writes blog posts in one hour.
Even though that's not my pace (yet!), I am not throwing in the pencil. I am not freaking out. Why?
I trust the writing process.
I've made the journey from crummy and unintelligible drafts to crafted and completed pieces many, many times. That journey comes with struggling to find words, and scratching out lines. It comes with cleaning my house instead of writing. It comes with staring at pages that look like rubbish, but with more blog writing practice, I know I'll find a rhythm. I know I'll get faster.
I'm not the only one who believes this. Anne Lamott, in her book Bird by Bird, is the Patron Saint of Sh*tty First Drafts. She writes:
“I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much.”
So don't expect yourself to get it perfect the first time. The wrong stuff provides a definitive contrast when it rubs up against the write stuff. (NOTE: I was just rereading this for the 20th time to find typos and I know that write stuff is wrong, but it's such a good and fun wrong that I decided to keep it. Yeah for pun intended typos.)
If you're a tennis player, knowing what it feels like to hit a down- the- line winner is made clear by knowing what it feels like to hit a wild shot off the racket rim. If you're a chef, recipes with too much or too little salt lead you to tweak ingredients so you know when flavors come together like a symphony.
It's the same with writing. Over time, you know when you've landed on the right ideas, structure, and words. You feel it in your bones, and you don't have to be stuck in the Land of Paralyzing Perfection.
Peter Elbow, author of Writing With Power, puts it like this:
“But if you let yourself write things wrong, the first time - perhaps even the second or third time too - something wonderful happens: when you feel a story or an idea in mind but can’t quite get a hold of it, you discover that by just starting to write and forcing yourself to keep on, you eventually find what you’re looking for...You discover you can write almost anything you want to write. You get braver.”
So get your bad and brave self ready to experience that something wonderful!
Always writing bad first drafts,
Lorrie
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