The drafting process
The drafting process doesn’t come naturally to me, and as such, at times I find it frustrating. During my early development as a writer, I was extremely compelled to edit as I wrote, and if I couldn’t figure out just how I wanted to phrase something, I wouldn’t write it. That lead to nothing ever getting written, as that level of perfectionism is the enemy of creativity. It wasn’t until I started telling myself to just write SOMETHING, no matter how bad it was, no matter how far away from what I was envisioning, that I started actually making progress.
Of course, when you finally start working that way, you need to next confront the challenge that is the process of revising. This too did not come naturally to me. Most of the time, when I write something flawed I can tell that there’s something not right about it- though not always, never discount the value of other sets of eyes -but just couldn’t figure out how to do it properly instead. I am subjected to the feeling of “Well, if I knew what it was supposed to be, I would have written it that way the first time!” Which is of course an utter fallacy, but it’s one I have to work through.
The two ways I combat this are as follows. First I resign myself to the fact that the first draft is going to suck. I don’t shoot for “good” or “accurate” the first time around; I just shoot for finished. I get some semblance of a complete telling of my story. I chunk it down into small pieces; scenes are usually for me the most convenient. When that first very, very rough draft is finished, then I like to do a second pass, seeing if any easy or obvious fixes jump out at me. The result of that, which I continue to pick at, becomes draft two.
The second things is having friends come over to read the script and give opinions. That has been amazingly helpful for me. It gives me fresh perspectives, and allows me a little bit of critical distance that enables me to see what I wrote in a new way. That often gets me passed that “if I knew how it should be I would have written it that way the first time” feeling. I’m so lucky and grateful for friends who come over and do this for me; I owe them so much. I then do the next round of edits based on their comments. Often I have a reading of this third draft as well, and that second round of responses often leads to the more or less finalized version.
And now I’m writing about writing in order to procrastinate writing. That’s enough of that! Back to the work that got me thinking about this in the first place.
Of course, when you finally start working that way, you need to next confront the challenge that is the process of revising. This too did not come naturally to me. Most of the time, when I write something flawed I can tell that there’s something not right about it- though not always, never discount the value of other sets of eyes -but just couldn’t figure out how to do it properly instead. I am subjected to the feeling of “Well, if I knew what it was supposed to be, I would have written it that way the first time!” Which is of course an utter fallacy, but it’s one I have to work through.
The two ways I combat this are as follows. First I resign myself to the fact that the first draft is going to suck. I don’t shoot for “good” or “accurate” the first time around; I just shoot for finished. I get some semblance of a complete telling of my story. I chunk it down into small pieces; scenes are usually for me the most convenient. When that first very, very rough draft is finished, then I like to do a second pass, seeing if any easy or obvious fixes jump out at me. The result of that, which I continue to pick at, becomes draft two.
The second things is having friends come over to read the script and give opinions. That has been amazingly helpful for me. It gives me fresh perspectives, and allows me a little bit of critical distance that enables me to see what I wrote in a new way. That often gets me passed that “if I knew how it should be I would have written it that way the first time” feeling. I’m so lucky and grateful for friends who come over and do this for me; I owe them so much. I then do the next round of edits based on their comments. Often I have a reading of this third draft as well, and that second round of responses often leads to the more or less finalized version.
And now I’m writing about writing in order to procrastinate writing. That’s enough of that! Back to the work that got me thinking about this in the first place.