"You Asked!" #31: First Drafts
stirlingbennett asked: Did you ever read back over your first draft and just shudder? Wonder how you could have ever been pleased with it? If so, how did you deal with it? Was your confidence in your ability to make it better just so strong there was no stopping you, or did you have to talk yourself into believing you were, indeed, a good writer and this draft was not the end?
2K9 authors answered:
J.T. Dutton: I definitely always shudder when I reread my first drafts. Afterwards, I plod into the kitchen and lay my hot face in the cold mashed potatoes. Writing is constant balancing act of self loathing and self love.
Beverly Patt: Actually, many times my first drafts contain some of my freshest material. It's when I go over and over something that I have the potential to crush the life out of it!
Kathryn Fitzmaurice: It depends on the day you ask me. One day I may feel completely confident about my first draft, the next, I wonder what in the world I was thinking and am ready to delete the entire thing.
Danielle Joseph: I've definitely had times when I've looked at a first draft and thought, whoa, does this even make sense? When that happens I usually give myself a couple of days break from the manuscript and come back with a refreshed eye. I try to break it down chapter by chapter and see what I can do to improve it. If I'm totally stuck, I'll turn to a critique buddy to give it a second eyeball.
Lauren Bjorkman: This is how it is for me: I love the story while I'm working on it. After I put it away, my confidence in it wanes over time, until I'm pretty sure the whole thing is garbage. When I bring it out again, I think...oh, this is better than I remembered. All I have to do is take out these lame bits, develop this character a little more, tweak the plot here and there, and it will be brilliant! My eternal optimism keeps me going.
Cheryl Renee Herbsman: What Kathryn said - only for me it’s not one day to the next, it’s one moment. Seriously. Up and down all day. It’s wonderful! It sucks! It’s genius! It’s inane! And so on…
Ellen Jensen Abbott: This happened to me this very morning. Today was a good day, so rather than the cold mashed potatoes ala JT Dutton, I said, "Whatever. I'll fix it next time around." Sometimes those lame sections serve a very important purpose of capturing the events/moments/scene you need in that spot, even if the writing is lame. Peter Elbow (I think it was him) even used this idea as a technique, recommending the WIRMI. When you can't find the right words you write WIRMI (what I really mean is) and get it out in some way shape or form knowing you will return. If it's a good day, like today, I keep going, relishing forward motion. On bad days, after I wipe the potatoes from my eyes, I word-smith and word-smith and write myself a pep-talk or write myself a diatribe until I can go forward again. Writing is a spiral, backwards, forwards, then backwards again. The important thing is to keep writing.
Edith M. Hemingway: As far as I'm concerned, the first draft is just to get the basic skeleton of my story down on paper--to make sure I have the semblance of a workable plot, characters that I can connect with, and a setting that draws me in. Then the fun begins. I love revision--fleshing out the characters, making the setting come alive, getting to the core of the emotion. That usually takes many more drafts because I think revision needs to be done in layers.
Rosanne Parry: I can't think of any art form that doesn't demand practice.
I've recently returned to playing my violin because I'm writing a character who plays. I know if I'm going to learn a new piece of music I need to spend time listening to it first. I need to figure out the key and pick out the tune at a very slow tempo. Then I need to rehearse the tricky parts many times over. Then I go back to the beginning and play through the whole piece at the proper tempo. This might take a few days or a few months depending on how hard the music is and it all sounds pretty bad to me when I'm at this stage of learning a song. But once I can play the whole piece through correctly, I go back and work on the "fun" parts of the music--the dynamics and phrasing and all the things that make a song unique and beautiful.
I'm very fortunate to have a critique group willing to revisit as many drafts of a story as I need. I try to make sure I've taken a story as far as I possibly can on my own before I bring it to my editor, so that we can work on refining the fun parts of the story. It's not that I love my first draft or even any of the in-between efforts. I think I just stick with it long enough because I love stories and know that multiple revisions is what it is going to take to write a good one.
Sydney Salter: No--but I probably should have. I do tend to think my glass is always half-full.
2K9 authors answered:
J.T. Dutton: I definitely always shudder when I reread my first drafts. Afterwards, I plod into the kitchen and lay my hot face in the cold mashed potatoes. Writing is constant balancing act of self loathing and self love.
Beverly Patt: Actually, many times my first drafts contain some of my freshest material. It's when I go over and over something that I have the potential to crush the life out of it!
Kathryn Fitzmaurice: It depends on the day you ask me. One day I may feel completely confident about my first draft, the next, I wonder what in the world I was thinking and am ready to delete the entire thing.
Danielle Joseph: I've definitely had times when I've looked at a first draft and thought, whoa, does this even make sense? When that happens I usually give myself a couple of days break from the manuscript and come back with a refreshed eye. I try to break it down chapter by chapter and see what I can do to improve it. If I'm totally stuck, I'll turn to a critique buddy to give it a second eyeball.
Lauren Bjorkman: This is how it is for me: I love the story while I'm working on it. After I put it away, my confidence in it wanes over time, until I'm pretty sure the whole thing is garbage. When I bring it out again, I think...oh, this is better than I remembered. All I have to do is take out these lame bits, develop this character a little more, tweak the plot here and there, and it will be brilliant! My eternal optimism keeps me going.
Cheryl Renee Herbsman: What Kathryn said - only for me it’s not one day to the next, it’s one moment. Seriously. Up and down all day. It’s wonderful! It sucks! It’s genius! It’s inane! And so on…
Ellen Jensen Abbott: This happened to me this very morning. Today was a good day, so rather than the cold mashed potatoes ala JT Dutton, I said, "Whatever. I'll fix it next time around." Sometimes those lame sections serve a very important purpose of capturing the events/moments/scene you need in that spot, even if the writing is lame. Peter Elbow (I think it was him) even used this idea as a technique, recommending the WIRMI. When you can't find the right words you write WIRMI (what I really mean is) and get it out in some way shape or form knowing you will return. If it's a good day, like today, I keep going, relishing forward motion. On bad days, after I wipe the potatoes from my eyes, I word-smith and word-smith and write myself a pep-talk or write myself a diatribe until I can go forward again. Writing is a spiral, backwards, forwards, then backwards again. The important thing is to keep writing.
Edith M. Hemingway: As far as I'm concerned, the first draft is just to get the basic skeleton of my story down on paper--to make sure I have the semblance of a workable plot, characters that I can connect with, and a setting that draws me in. Then the fun begins. I love revision--fleshing out the characters, making the setting come alive, getting to the core of the emotion. That usually takes many more drafts because I think revision needs to be done in layers.
Rosanne Parry: I can't think of any art form that doesn't demand practice.
I've recently returned to playing my violin because I'm writing a character who plays. I know if I'm going to learn a new piece of music I need to spend time listening to it first. I need to figure out the key and pick out the tune at a very slow tempo. Then I need to rehearse the tricky parts many times over. Then I go back to the beginning and play through the whole piece at the proper tempo. This might take a few days or a few months depending on how hard the music is and it all sounds pretty bad to me when I'm at this stage of learning a song. But once I can play the whole piece through correctly, I go back and work on the "fun" parts of the music--the dynamics and phrasing and all the things that make a song unique and beautiful.
I'm very fortunate to have a critique group willing to revisit as many drafts of a story as I need. I try to make sure I've taken a story as far as I possibly can on my own before I bring it to my editor, so that we can work on refining the fun parts of the story. It's not that I love my first draft or even any of the in-between efforts. I think I just stick with it long enough because I love stories and know that multiple revisions is what it is going to take to write a good one.
Sydney Salter: No--but I probably should have. I do tend to think my glass is always half-full.