On Shitty First Drafts

Writing is difficult, serious, grinding work. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. Even writers who have honed their craft for decades know it is hard but they, like any other skilled professional, make it look easy. Well, easier.

Also, never trust a whiny writer. After all, in how many professions is the question, “Can’t you see I’m working?” even remotely justifiable when one is lying on one’s back, or sitting in an armchair, staring at slow-moving clouds? Yep. Not many; possibly none.

Fortunately, whiny writers are few and easily silenced (just give them the look) or ignored (just walk away). Real writers know that writing is difficult, but that’s not all it is. The writing process can sparkle and whirl. It’s a play space in which authors set a herd of ideas loose, alive to their grace and strength, and eventually capture a few of them in language. Writing can be scary and exhilarating as it welcomes the unexpected and leaves room for what is yet to come. Among humans and our mammalian cousins, play behavior indicates physical health and safety. Animals, particularly prey species such as horses, will not engage in play unless they feel safe. As Terry Marks-Tarlow has written, “interest, curiosity, passion, and joy are all cultivated through play.”

For writers who feel overwhelmed by the seriousness of writing works of depth and meaning might well ask, “How can play behavior be fostered?” My favorite advice comes from novelist Annie Lamott. In her book Bird by Bird: Some Thoughts on Writing and Life, she says put all your energy into writing a really shitty first draft.  This goal will help you throw, toss, or stick ideas on the page in any order, anywhere at all, then move everything around, and mix it all up.

Will it be a mess? Yes. And that’s how it should be because “messes are the artist's true friend.” When writers have “the courage or the stamina to write lots and lots of terrible first drafts,” Lamott says, they learn that “good second drafts can spring from these, and … that big sloppy imperfect messes have value.”

So go ahead and make a fine mess of ideas, aim for that shitty first draft. When you do, disinvite Perfectionism, the Critic, and the Expert. Tell them to go stand in the corner, facing away from you, until you’re ready to call them over. Or don’t call them over, but instead invite a Highly Skilled and Admittedly Imperfect Editor to play with you instead.

When enough time has passed—oh, maybe a decade or so—you might even be able to laugh uproariously at your shitty first draft. What was I thinking? you might wonder. The answer: What you could, in that moment.

Your writing, like you, is a work in progress.