Lilith Saintcrow

First drafts–what I call a zero draft, because to me a first draft is one you can let someone else see–suck.

This is a law of writing. I feel confident in asserting that there has never been a first draft that has not sucked. Hemingway and Kerouac rewrote. So did Trollope, Dickens, Salinger, Wolfe, Eliot, and anyone else you care to name. Zero drafts suck, world without end, amen.

So why keep going? Why keep plowing through this thing if it ends up being a messy, untidy, nasty little pile of adverbs and passive voice? (There. I wrote passive voice instead of passive verbs. Proud of me yet? It was a struggle, I tell you.)

Because you kind of have to go through the suckage to get to the good part. Zero drafts are where you’re so excited by what you’re doing that you’re gabbling, your hands are moving around a lot, you’re so jazzed you’re actually spitting while you speak. It takes a while to get everything you’re excited about OUT, so you can start the process of trimming and shaping.

I suspect this happens in movies too. I’ve seen enough “Director’s Cuts” to think that the editing room, just like the revision process, is a boon. They are different parts of the creative process–sketching and practicing before you paint. Doing daily ballet class and choreography runs over and over again before the dress rehearsal, before you get onstage. Practicing a speech in the mirror before you give it.

I don’t know why writers think that the book has to be perfect the instant it falls out of your head. Mostly, I suspect, because we only see the finished book on the shelves and publishing holds onto that air of mystique with claws and toenails. The mystique serves a number of purposes–but that’s (say it with me) another blog post.

And there is the biggest hurdle, the one I want to talk to you about. It’s the Inner Censor, telling you to quit this writing thing, you suck, nothing will ever get better and you’ll never finish and oh, by the way, you’re ugly too and nobody loves you.

Well, I have three little words for that. I can’t say it any more simply than this:

F!CK THAT NOISE.

The Censor’s job is not to make your writing better. The Censor’s job is to make you feel bad. Sometimes the Censor has something valuable to say–once in a blue moon, when the planets align and the right virgin sacrifices have been made and the armies have massed to conquer. (In other words, almost never.) The Censor is not your Editor or your Conscience. It is the voice of everyone who ever told you that you were Not Good Enough, and as such it does not deserve to see the Zero Draft before everyone else does. Send Sven and Oleg after the Censor. I promise thee it shall do thee no harm, dearest fellow Writer.

Let me tell you a little story.

When I was learning to ride a bicycle, they tried to tell me to pedal backward to stop. (It was one of those Huffy Pink Princesses with the chain-brake, not a hand-brake.) It didn’t make any sense to me, so to stop, I would just pick something and run into it. Much injury (that I am now old enough to regard as hilarity) ensued. They would keep telling me to pedal backward, but it just didn’t connect inside my head.

For those of you just joining us: Yes, I have always been this goddamn stubborn. I don’t think it will change at this late date.

One day, something happened. It was like something lit up in another corner of my brain. I snapped the pedals back and stood on them, and produced a long, admirable skid mark. As if I’d been practicing braking all this time. It suddenly made sense to me.

Hang with me here.

I find a lot of motivation in stubbornly telling my Inner Censor that I’m going to do it DESPITE. Or just to spite, whichever. (Hey, you take it where you find it.) Writing a zero draft is like being on that bicycle and having to run into things to stop. Getting tipped off and skinning various body parts. Being so excited by the sound of wind in your ears and the motion that you’re not very good at first.

But one day, the goddamn thing is finished. You snap the brakes back, produce a skid, and stand there for a second, smelling the good smell of outside on a sunny day and breathing deep, your whole body tingling.

That’s when you start riding the bicycle for revisions. The finished book is when you’re in the effing Tour de France. Only you’re not riding to dope yourself up and beat out everyone. You’re riding because of the wind in your ears and the feeling of the ribbon of the road unreeling under your tires.

The sucky thing is, each time you start a new project you have to learn how to hit the brakes all over again. It doesn’t get much easier, but there is a certain amount of comfort in knowing the process. Knowing that eventually that click in your head will happen.

Falling off the bike and running into things to stop sucks. It leaves bruises and it’s hard. Zero drafts are messy and they suck. It leaves bruises too, and it’s mega hard.

But please don’t stop. Learning to really ride that beast of a bicycle is worth it. The zero drafts suck, but it gets made up for later, I promise.

Now get out there and ride.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 7th, 2008 at 11:59 am and is filed under Real Life, Writing (About). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.