First drafts are our agony and our ecstasy. This
where our glistening ideas spill onto the page. This is where we get to play
around with our ideas, see our characters grow and our themes mature. First
drafts are fun. They’re our creative playground.
But they’re also tough. Our words on paper rarely measure up
to the sparkling perfection of the ideas in our heads. We run into plot holes,
creative blocks, stubborn characters, and personal doubts. We want so badly to
get our first drafts right—both on
the general principle of wanting to do our story justice and to spare ourselves
the work of intensive edits later on.
And this is where we can run into problems. We can start
getting all obsessive-compulsive about creating a perfect first draft—and we
end by totally psyching ourselves out. It’s not a pretty picture.
Hi, my name is K.M. Weiland, and I was a first draft over-thinker
I admit it: I’m just a tad obsessive. And compulsive. And
perfectionistic. Bad combo. Up until my first book, A Man Called Outlaw, was published, this wasn’t such a problem. I
just wrote for myself, so I was putting way less pressure on the process of
that first draft. But after I came to that always shocking realization that Real
Live Readers were actually reading my words, something painful started
happening.
By the time of Outlaw’s
publication, Behold the Dawn’s first
draft was already completed, so it didn’t suffer the wrath of what I like to
call First Draft Fallout. But Dreamlander
and my not-yet-published historical novel The Deepest Breath sure did.
What was happening to me? Mostly, it all boiled down to one
fear-inducing word: over-thinking.
Instead of letting my words just pour out of me whenever I sat down to write
these first drafts, I instead sat there and thought. And thought and thought.
Write a paragraph. Read it. Think about it. Obsess about
word choice. Obsess about how the characters are coming across. Fuss about
thematic implications. Drive self crazy. Rewrite paragraph. Sit and stare at screen.
Write a new paragraph.
The problem with over-thinking your first draft
Sound painful? It is. I’ll bet it also sounds super familiar
to a lot of you. Authors are under a ton of pressure to get it right. And instead of being mitigated once you have a reading
public, it only gets worse (à la the sophomore novel problem). Not only do we
have to write something that’s good enough to compete in an increasingly
competitive marketplace, we also have to write something that will optimally
keep us from gathering too many scathing reviews on Amazon and Goodreads.
Instead of sitting at our desks and thinking about our
stories, we sit there and think about How to Be an Awesome Writer. I’ll let you
in on a little secret: this is not a good plan. How to Be an Awesome Writer is a great way to instead discover How to Write a Pompous, Lousy, Unfun, Totally Difficult First Draft.
Fiction is an amalgam of art and craft. We can think about
craft. We should think about craft.
Craft is an analytic, left-brain exercise. Art, on the hand, is a deeply
subconscious, emotional journey. We shouldn’t think too hard about that—at least,
not while we’re in the act. Thinking too hard dries up the creative side of the
brain and dams up that subconscious flow of ideas, words, and images.
The result? A miserable writer and a tough (and probably bad)
first draft.
The remedy for over-thinking in the first draft
How do we fix this all too prevalent problem? The answer is
simple. The implementation, however, isn’t always so easy. The great Richard Bach, in his short story
and essay anthology A Gift of Wings, spells it out:
It took time to learn that the hard thing about writing is to let the story write itself, while one sits at the typewriter and does as little thinking as possible. It happened over and over again, and the beginner learned—when you start puzzling over an idea, and slowing down on the keys, the writing gets worse and worse.
For me, the cure came when I started in on a major rewrite of Dreamlander.
I was closing in on a deadline, and, quite frankly, I just didn’t have the
time to sit and think about every paragraph. I sat down, and I wrote. My
fingers flew across those keys. It felt like a miracle, after those two
pulling-teeth first drafts I’d just finished, and it made me realize two things:
1. My writing was fun
again.
2. My writing was better
again.
As soon as I stopped over-thinking
my process, my infernal internal editor shut up, my characters started talking to
me again, and my writing improved vastly. Turned out the very thing I thought
was helping me be a good
writer was holding me back.
Stop over-thinking your first draft, start editing your second draft
Will resisting the urge to over-think produce a better first
draft? Yes. Will it produce a perfect first draft? No. But that’s what editing is for.
Editing, as a left-brain aspect of the process, is supposed to be
thought about. The first draft isn’t. The first draft is the place to smear
your raw creativity onto the page. Don’t worry about being awesome. Don’t worry
about being perfect. Just have fun. Live your story; find your awe. Don’t think
too hard about what you’re doing until after
you’ve done it.
Tell me your opinion: Do you ever struggle with over-thinking your first draft?
Related Posts: Should You Edit as You Go?
8 Reasons to Let Your Story Ripen
Why You Should Kick Your Story Aside and Write Another One
_________________
Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Wordplay podcast in iTunes).
Tell me your opinion: Do you ever struggle with over-thinking your first draft?
Related Posts: Should You Edit as You Go?
8 Reasons to Let Your Story Ripen
Why You Should Kick Your Story Aside and Write Another One
_________________
Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Wordplay podcast in iTunes).- June 16, 2013
30 Comments
- K.M. Weiland
- Posted in Creativity , Feature , first draft , Left Brain , Right Brain , sophomore novel , writer's block , Writing Life
