Shitty First Drafts

[megankent]

If you haven't read Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, you're really missing something. Go, get it, read it, repeatedly.

Today, I was thinking about one of the chapters in the book, called Shitty First Drafts. Specifically, as I was hating what I was writing, and conscious that it was wandering to Fresno and back the long way, I thought of this bit:

Just get it all down on paper, because there may be something great in those six crazy pages that you would never have gotten to by more rational, grown-up means. There may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph on page six that you just love, that is so beautiful or wild that you now know what you're supposed to be writing about, more or less, or in what direction you might go--but there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages.

And then I kept writing. :)

Comments

[farad]

That's the point of Nano, to get it on paper. I love that aspect to it - adn then the secondary aspect, the 'December' part: finding the sentences that you love out of the draft and refining them.

And Lamott is wonderful, an excellent choice right now.

[adonnchaid]

That's the hardest thing for me, to simply put the words on the page and go back later to cull the crap and keep the gems, but as Fara said, that's what these exercises are all about.

Thanks for the links!