Your First Draft Should Be Shitty

I don't like to give writing advice because, frankly, a lot of writing advice can actually make you worse— it can steal your voice and stifle your creativity. Writing is an intensely personal affair, something honed with hours of practice and even more hours of staring at a blank word document.

But one good piece of advice I hear repeatedly and think everyone struggles to take to heart is this: your first draft is supposed to be shitty.

The first draft isn't for finesse. It's for getting your thoughts out, throwing out all your ideas, no matter how terrible they are. No one needs to see your first draft but you! So if you want to get an idea out there? Just do it.

I share my first drafts sometimes because

1. I think they're hilarious on occasion

2. I think other people need to see— like I do— that we can't all be Hemingway and get wasted and bang out a book or six. (that's not healthy anyway!)

I'm bad about editing as I write, and I'd say it's probably my worst habit as a poet and author. Don't be like me. Don't edit and write at the same time. If you do that, you waste a lot of potential.

When I don't edit and write at the same time, everything flows better and I feel less stressed. Not to mention, I've stolen hundreds of lines and stanzas that sucked or didn't fit, put them into my "poem scraps" folder, and later cannibalized them to make some of my best work.

(Keep things that don't work! They might work for something later!!)

Anyway, listen. I wrote a poem this week. Sort of— lines have been jumping through my head for a while. One thing I struggled with, immensely, was the opening stanza. So I decided to just get the main idea I wanted out there and work on actually making it sound like a poem later!

Here's the first draft:

Tell me you don't look at that and think "B, are you... okay?" Because I certainly do.

I was not okay! I was frustrated. Nothing sounded right. I knew the idea I wanted to get across but everything sounded, somehow, even worse than this.

So I wrote this... and gave up and wrote the rest of the poem.

After that, it clicked more in my mind. It still took quite a few tries, but I wound up with this as my first stanza:

Hmm, not the best opening stanza I've ever written, but way better!

(Accepting that not everything you write can be your best work is also important. Sometimes you just need to get the thoughts out.)

So y'all. It's submission season, it's NANORWRIMO season, it's the time of year when all us sad poets and starving artists stay in our houses and feel emotional due to the lack of sunlight and Vitamin D. You're going to want to write more, now, without the allure of summer and swimming and being outdoors until 9 p.m.

But if you're anything like me, you're going to be a frustrated perfectionist. And hey, that's a personality trait for sure— but it won't help your writing. No, really! Being a perfectionist will only hurt your writing.

So get out there (or in there, beside a space heater drinking hot chocolate) and write terrible first drafts. Don't look at them until you're done. Don't think about them.

Just... write... the ... thing.

(This has been a self call-out.)