Somebody tell me it's OK that my first draft is mostly terrible

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mccardey

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This will tell you why first drafts stink and why that's a good thing.

Beth - that Ira Glass post was so terrific I sent it to both of my kids. Thanks for linking to it :)

PS: Anninyn - James is just being James; most first drafts are pants or we'd never write second drafts. And third drafts and stuff. The only difference is that some writers do the drafts in sequence and some - like James, perhaps - tend to clean up as they go.
 
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mario_c

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My first drafts are great. Of course, everyone else thinks they're crap :D so I rewrite. And proofread. And rewrite again. And gather notes - at least no one told anyone to just give up writing, as I have been told on other writing boards (hence my location). And I fastidiously review notes and rewrite and proof and...until I have something that's not crap. That's the best I'll ever do.
 

Linda Adams

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Plus, even well-published writers sometimes have a book that goes really wrong in the first draft. Some event, some change happens and something gets in there that shouldn't. Might be a character that changes the story in ways the author didn't intend; an event that twists it in the wrong direction. It happens.
 

Anninyn

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Thanks everybody. Still going at it- there are bits that seem really good, and now my mood has lifted it's not the worst thing in the world any more.
 

bluntforcetrauma

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My first drafts are great. Of course, everyone else thinks they're crap :D so I rewrite. And proofread. And rewrite again. And gather notes - at least no one told anyone to just give up writing, as I have been told on other writing boards (hence my location). And I fastidiously review notes and rewrite and proof and...until I have something that's not crap. That's the best I'll ever do.

I've heard horror stories about other boards, hence, I've never gone to them. Dont know why AW is different, it just is.
 

Phaeal

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Just in case you haven't read enough analogies yet.

The first draft is a huge pile of clay that you've laboriously heaped on your table, patting it into a rough shape as you go along. From the second draft onward, you'll cut away chunks, add bits, pat and punch and pinch, until you finally have a gorgeous figure of, oh, Marcus Aurelius. Or a duck. But a damn fine duck.
 

Larkin

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I always go through a point where I hate my wip. That's when I step back and work on something else. And yes, your first draft can be a mess of grammar, typos, and sentence fragments etc. Those are all easy enough to fix. IMHO it's a tight plot and interesting characters that is most important.
 

fourlittlebees

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I've heard horror stories about other boards, hence, I've never gone to them. Dont know why AW is different, it just is.

I've said that to people before, and pretty much said it here. There ARE people who should give up, and those are the peope who continually come back, ask for advice, argue with all suggestions, don't listen to a thing anyone says, and then starts over from the top. ;)
 

bearilou

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The first draft is a huge pile of clay that you've laboriously heaped on your table, patting it into a rough shape as you go along. From the second draft onward, you'll cut away chunks, add bits, pat and punch and pinch, until you finally have a gorgeous figure of, oh, Marcus Aurelius. Or a duck. But a damn fine duck.

This is something that needs to be immortalized into a sig line.

yes. yes it does.
 

feather

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IMHO it's a tight plot and interesting characters that is most important.

This is where my first drafts always fail miserably. My characters are interesting, but my plot is patched together from random slivers that has little to nothing to do with each other. I might love my first drafts, but to anyone who isn't me and can't read my mind, they are almost unreadable.

So yes, add another member to the "first drafts SHOULD suck" club.
 

mario_c

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I've heard horror stories about other boards, hence, I've never gone to them. Dont know why AW is different, it just is.
The person who said that to me, I know for a fact was banned from AW but there she's given free rein to say what she wants. Yeah, we need to give the AW mods some love.
Having said that, all different kinds of experiences can be useful. The other site specializes in screenplay writers (like me) so the information I gleaned from there can be invaluable. There are quite a few verified pros there too :D just like AW's many published novelists. But yeah, it's not fun out in the real world of the cutthroat den of thieves that is pro screenwriters. Does make me wonder why I bother...
 

B.D. Eyeslie

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As I wrote the first draft of my first project, I knew I had been touched by the gods. However, upon reading it the first time, I was convinced someone had broken into my file and changed all the words around. It did improve with subsequent revisions, but that was my first experience with the old adage of inspiration vs. perspiration.
 

Satchan

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Yeah, that happened to me with my second project. While writing the whole first draft, I was all "man, this is totally awesome." Then I finished it and sent it off to my beta reader, who pointed out that the plot appeared in the beginning, vanished in the middle, and then showed up in the last chapter. ^^; She had a point.

Then again, the other half of the time I'm writing first drafts, I'm convinced that they're utter rubbish and I should chop off my fingers in order to avoid inflicting such things on the world ever again. No middle ground with me, it seems...
 

Cassiopeia

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"The first draft of anything is shit." - Ernest Hemingway
AMEN!!!

To the OP: Hang in there. If you are meeting with resistance it's because what you are doing matters and is important for you to do.

We don't have to be brilliant out of the gate. Those that are, well...they are rare and extremely blessed. The rest of us edit and edit and EDIT!

:) Before you know it, the next first draft won't suck as badly, but it will still need work. It's a process. A wonderfully painful, horrifically terrifying process but it's growth, if you stick with it and success at the end of the tunnel.
 

Anninyn

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What I find seems to be happening for me is the first few thousand words pour out of the keyboard like liquid gold and I think 'God, I'm a genius, why is no publisher beating down my door? Can't they just feel how fantabulous I am? Surely genius like mine should leave ripples in the world!' and then I come down from my adrenaline rush and become a little more reasonable.

And then the next few thousand words are like getting blood from a stone. Previously I've given up at this point. I am NOT doing that now. I have a goal- between 500 and 1000 words a day, with the promise to myself that I can edit them later, and hopefully once I'm a few thousand words in I'll be flying again. Rinse and repeat.
 

Shanley

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Anninyn, welcome to the club. :) We hear ya.
Rinse and repeat, indeed.
Some of the best writing advice I ever received was from a rule Cassandra Clare posted for writers on her website: Butt in chair, hands on keyboard (BICHOK).
Good luck!
 

Voxtrot

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The way I see it, at least you've got a first draft. And you only get better at writing by... writing, don't they say?

So even if it truly is horrible, A. You've got it, and B. It'll only get better as you keep at it.
 

AlanF

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That's the spirit, Anninyn, continue to press onward towards your goals. You can do it!
 

Susan Lanigan

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It's OK. It's OK. It's OK.

I've just finished 183,000 words of relative crap. It will be a leaner meaner machine when I'm done with it.
 

gothicangel

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It's OK. It's OK. It's OK.

I've just finished 183,000 words of relative crap. It will be a leaner meaner machine when I'm done with it.

I think the best advice I can give is have fun with the first draft, then prepare for the hard slog in draft 2. :)
 

Inkblot

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Chances are good that if your first draft sucks you're on the right track. Why? Because first drafts usually suck. If you recognize the multitude of flaws in your first draft that means your critical faculties are fully functioning -- you're not in love with your sentences and paragraphs simply because they're so new and shiny and because YOU wrote them. Now -- with your rose-colored glasses off and your editing skills fully engaged -- you can work on improving your subsequent drafts. Till some day, some draft is actually not too bad-- if you do say so yourself!
 

fredXgeorge

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Definitely okay! As well as some of the terrible writing in my first drafts, often if I reach a section I know I need really work at, like a fight scene, I'll just write something like "They fight." Or, the best one: "Someone does something."
 

ElleRohan

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What I find seems to be happening for me is the first few thousand words pour out of the keyboard like liquid gold and I think 'God, I'm a genius, why is no publisher beating down my door? Can't they just feel how fantabulous I am? Surely genius like mine should leave ripples in the world!' and then I come down from my adrenaline rush and become a little more reasonable.

And then the next few thousand words are like getting blood from a stone. Previously I've given up at this point. I am NOT doing that now. I have a goal- between 500 and 1000 words a day, with the promise to myself that I can edit them later, and hopefully once I'm a few thousand words in I'll be flying again. Rinse and repeat.

Haha that is so me too.

Now if I could only figure out how to edit more effectively. ;)
 
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