First drafts, eh? That initial piece of work that has finally been torn from your subconscious, kicking and screaming, onto paper. Trust me, it will be bad. Really bad.

Hemingway said, “The first draft of anything is sh*t!”, and I agree with him. But, you know what, it’s necessary.

Before we go any further, let me check something. You’re not one of those writers who sends their first draft out to publishers and agents, are you? Tell me you’re not. If you do, you’re only harming your reputation with them. You need to send time to refine your work first.

Picture yourself as an artist; someone who makes beautiful vases. Before you can begin to create your masterpiece, you have to drop a great big lump of ugly, dirty clay onto the wheel. That’s what a first draft is. A great big lump of clay. It doesn’t look nice, it certainly isn’t in the right shape, and if you tried to ship it out to sell as a vase, your career would be over in a second.

First, you have to refine it, shape it, add the decoration and decoration that makes it stand out. That’s what rewriting is.

Creative writing books will tell you to put your first draft away in a drawer for a week, a month or even longer to get some distance from the piece before you begin to rework it. If you’ve got the luxury of time, go for it. I prefer to leave it until the following morning or, if I’m on a really tight deadline, the time it take me to make a cup of tea.

We’ll discuss rewriting in a later post but, for now, allow yourself to write a big lump of clay. Don’t worry about how it looks or reads, that the plot doesn’t make sense, or that the characters are flat and unoriginal. It’s on paper, and that’s all that matters for now.

Tommy

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