Embracing Ugly Drafts

Has this ever happened to you?

You have an idea for a story, a book, an article, a blog post, and in your head it sounds perfect. All your ideas come to you with lightning speed. You’ve really hit on something!

Not wanting to let the idea get cold, you rush to your computer, open up a Word document and start to tap out the brilliant sentences that have been filling your brain. You write and write, only to discover that what came out on the page is awful — truly horrible — something a third grader would be ashamed of.

You ask yourself, what happened to those beautifully formed ideas and sentences and cogent, sharp arguments? Why is the writing so bad? You are sufficiently discouraged to give up writing altogether and leave writing to “the experts.” Who are you anyhow to write?

So what happened between the brilliant idea in your head and the clunky prose laying like road kill on your page? Two words: FIRST DRAFT.

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April 4, 2011 at 1:47 pm | Fiction Advice, The Writing Life, Writing Advice | No comment