I wrote this a while back for Backspace.com. Figured I'd post it here too. Hope it helps quell the nerves of writers facing their first draft of a new book:
First-Draft Terror
(Alternately titled: "First, kill all the adverbs...")
I recently started the first draft of a
new novel. This instills in me all the self-confidence of two virgins in a MINI
Cooper. I’m sweaty and awkward. I don’t have a clue where anything goes. And
I’m already questioning my choice of vehicle.
First drafts are scary. There’s so
much expectation—and so much disappointment. Scenes lumber off in the wrong
direction. The writing feels clumsy and artless. The story confuses. Or worse,
it bores. I compare the well-dressed prose of authors I admire and cringe at my
own naked and brutish words.
And I want to hit “delete.”
It’s easy to lose faith. I should know: my
first attempt at a novel still sits—half-finished—in my file cabinet. I’ve
since published three novels. Yet I have never been able to summon the courage
to go back to that manuscript.
I know a lot more about writing first
drafts than I did then but I still struggle on every page. Through trial and
error, I’ve found a few things that have helped me get over the rough spots:
1.Write a book the same way you
would enter a relationship
You and your characters are going to be
together for a long, long time. (If it’s a series as my first three novels
were, it could end up lasting longer than many marriages). You’ll probably end
up dreaming about your characters, driving around with them—and yes, even
showering with them. So it’s worth spending a few weeks getting to know them
before you commit to a long-term relationship. If you have to dump somebody,
it’s a lot easier to do it before they’ve taken up residence in your novel (or
your apartment, for that matter).
I was a journalist before I became a
novelist and I would never have considered writing a profile of someone before
I followed them around for several days and asked a lot of annoying and deeply
personal questions. Why should fictional characters be any different? At least
a third of my own dilemmas in first drafts spring up because I’m not quite sure
what a character would do in a given situation.
2. Loose lips sink manuscripts
Try not to talk about your ideas until
you’ve finished a first draft. Ideas are fragile and tenuous at this stage.
Even well meaning friends and family members can sink them with off-handed
comments (“I saw that same idea in a movie last year”) or unsolicited advice
(You know what you should write
about…”)
The only thing worse than having friends
hate your idea is having them love
it. Remember, they don’t love what you’ve written; they love what they think
you are about to write. In other words, you’ve just gone from being the
architect of your manuscript to the contractor—building to someone else’s
specifications. Let them react to what you’ve written, not to what you intend
to write.
3. Tread softly into the black
hole of “research”
It is so deliciously tempting to Google
some minor point in a first draft and two hours later find that you have read
three articles and four Wikipedia entries on stuff that will never find its way
into your book. Internet research can gobble up your time in unproductive ways.
So can answering mail. And writing your blog. If you have to do them, tack them
on when you are just about ready to close down for the day. Never kid yourself
into thinking that you’ve worked on your book when all you’ve done is Google
whether the Kardashian sisters have had plastic surgery.
4. Write like you’re going to train your dog on it
I like to trick my inner editor when I
start a new novel. I tell my inner editor I’m not writing a book at all. I’m
just “playing around.” It doesn’t matter if it’s bad because it’s not “for
real.”
To keep up the ruse, I don’t begin novels
when I have three hours to write. I begin when I have twenty minutes (this
applies whenever I get stuck on a first draft as well.) I try to write as much
as I can in that time frame without reading it.
I don’t create a new word document.
I write on an existing one. Or better yet, an index card or the back of a flyer
advertising $50 off plumbing services (all the better to dispose of).
Of course, this presumes you can
distinguish your “bad” work from your “good.” But perhaps not. I had an art
teacher at Northwestern University named George Cohen who once instructed every
student to paint the “best” painting he or she could create. In the next class,
Cohen asked every student to paint the “worst” painting. Then Cohen papered the
room with all of our artwork and asked students to vote on the best pieces.
About 75 percent of the pieces voted as “best” were the ones we had painted as
our “worsts.” So this is another argument for not concentrating too much on the
quality of your work: you may be a bad judge of it anyway.
5.Remember that all problems are
fixable—just not in the first draft
How many times have you read a book and
said, “there’s no way the protagonist can get out of this mess.” And then he or
she does. Sometimes, the writer comes up with a very clever solution (I hate
those writers). Most times, the solutions are more prosaic. But they help to
remind me that when I feel that my manuscript’s problems are intractable, they
aren’t. I just haven’t figured out the solution yet. It always comes—but
usually not in the first draft. That’s why I need to finish the first draft. I will never get it right until I first get
it down.
Above all, have faith in yourself. You
started this. You can finish it. Don’t worry about what comes in between. To
build a smooth road, you always have to start with a pile of rocks.
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