First Drafts
Filed under Uncategorized • 25-07-2007 •
If you’re a perfectionist like me, and you spend ages on a first draft trying to make every sentence perfect before moving on to the next, there’s a link on today’s Velcro City Tourist Board to a quote from Anne Lamott that you might find liberating:
“The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. You just let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page. If one of the characters wants to say, “Well, so what, Mr. Poopy Pants?,” you let her. No one is going to see it. If the kid wants to get into really sentimental, weepy, emotional territory, you let him. Just get it all down on paper, because there may be something great in those six crazy pages that you would never have gotten to by more rational, grown-up means. There may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph on page six that you just love, that is so beautiful or wild that you now know what you’re supposed to be writing about, more or less, or in what direction you might go — but there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages.”Tags: Inspiration • Writing
I get pissed off every time I see that comment by Anne Lamot. She appears to believe that what works for her works for all writers.
NOT THIS ONE. Crap first draft –> crap story, IMO.
I think you have to strike a balance – I’ve always found that if I get too hung up on producing a perfect first draft, I stall and can’t finish it. But I agree that it’s pointless to write a *completely* crap first draft – if you have to totally rewrite it, what’s the point?
I think the trick is to find a way to write well without worrying about the occasional dodgy sentence – until you revisit it in the second draft.