The drafting process
Jul. 15th, 2014 03:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
breakinglight11The drafting process doesn’t come naturally to me, and as such, at times I find it frustrating. During my early development as a writer, I was extremely compelled to edit as I wrote, and if I couldn’t figure out just how I wanted to phrase something, I wouldn’t write it. That lead to nothing ever getting written, as that level of perfectionism is the enemy of creativity. It wasn’t until I started telling myself to just write SOMETHING, no matter how bad it was, no matter how far away from what I was envisioning, that I started actually making progress.
Of course, when you finally start working that way, you need to next confront the challenge that is the process of revising. This too did not come naturally to me. Most of the time, when I write something flawed I can tell that there’s something not right about it— though not always, never discount the value of other sets of eyes —but just couldn’t figure out how to do it properly instead. I am subjected to the feeling of “Well, if I knew what it was supposed to be, I would have written it that way the first time!” Which is of course an utter fallacy, but it’s one I have to work through.
The two ways I combat this are as follows. First I resign myself to the fact that the first draft is going to suck. I don’t shoot for “good” or “accurate” the first time around; I just shoot for finished. I get some semblance of a complete telling of my story. I chunk it down into small pieces; scenes are usually for me the most convenient. When that first very, very rough draft is finished, then I like to do a second pass, seeing if any easy or obvious fixes jump out at me. The result of that, which I continue to pick at, becomes draft two.
The second things is having friends come over to read the script and give opinions. That has been amazingly helpful for me. It gives me fresh perspectives, and allows me a little bit of critical distance that enables me to see what I wrote in a new way. That often gets me passed that “if I knew how it should be I would have written it that way the first time” feeling. I’m so lucky and grateful for friends who come over and do this for me; I owe them so much. I then do the next round of edits based on their comments. Often I have a reading of this third draft as well, and that second round of responses often leads to the more or less finalized version.
And now I’m writing about writing in order to procrastinate writing. That’s enough of that! Back to the work that got me thinking about this in the first place.
Of course, when you finally start working that way, you need to next confront the challenge that is the process of revising. This too did not come naturally to me. Most of the time, when I write something flawed I can tell that there’s something not right about it— though not always, never discount the value of other sets of eyes —but just couldn’t figure out how to do it properly instead. I am subjected to the feeling of “Well, if I knew what it was supposed to be, I would have written it that way the first time!” Which is of course an utter fallacy, but it’s one I have to work through.
The two ways I combat this are as follows. First I resign myself to the fact that the first draft is going to suck. I don’t shoot for “good” or “accurate” the first time around; I just shoot for finished. I get some semblance of a complete telling of my story. I chunk it down into small pieces; scenes are usually for me the most convenient. When that first very, very rough draft is finished, then I like to do a second pass, seeing if any easy or obvious fixes jump out at me. The result of that, which I continue to pick at, becomes draft two.
The second things is having friends come over to read the script and give opinions. That has been amazingly helpful for me. It gives me fresh perspectives, and allows me a little bit of critical distance that enables me to see what I wrote in a new way. That often gets me passed that “if I knew how it should be I would have written it that way the first time” feeling. I’m so lucky and grateful for friends who come over and do this for me; I owe them so much. I then do the next round of edits based on their comments. Often I have a reading of this third draft as well, and that second round of responses often leads to the more or less finalized version.
And now I’m writing about writing in order to procrastinate writing. That’s enough of that! Back to the work that got me thinking about this in the first place.
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no subject
Date: 2014-07-15 08:08 pm (UTC)Amen to that. There was a saying we threw around at VP: you can't edit the blank page.
I think this is a problem a lot of beginning writers have--actually getting stuff down, and finishing their work. This is why I think NaNoWriMo is so important at a certain point in the learning process, as it teaches you to write (almost) every day, and to just put words down, even if they're the wrong ones. Other challenges (like your 31 plays) or writing prompts are valuable for similar reasons.
That said, now that I feel I can reliably finish stuff, I do allow myself some more leeway to edit as I write. I re-read my work from time to time, and fix obvious things--wording, inconsistencies, etc. But if I'm doing a wordcount-based challenge, something like Camp NaNo, like I am this month, I do temporarily suspend that urge.
But yeah. Drafting is picking out the stone; revising is chiseling away everything that isn't the statue.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-15 10:47 pm (UTC)I actually didn't have this problem until after I went the Writer Camp. I think it made my internal editor too strong. I can moderate it with booze, but history shows how that usually ends up being a terrible idea.
Usually, though, when I've talked to people who are revise-as-you-go, the switch wasn't changing their style (like P. here) so much as doing things like having better planning or having a limit on in-process revisions. It's interesting to me to see you guys talk about doing the traditional "fuck it for the first draft" process instead. It's a trick I've never been able to get the hang of.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-16 01:21 pm (UTC)I dunno, I have no good advice, I guess. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-16 03:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-16 05:58 pm (UTC)In programming, we've gradually developed something of a discipline around refactoring: an ever-growing list of specific problems to look out for (usually called "bad smells"), and common options for how to improve them. Does anything of the sort exist in writing, or does everyone just wing it?
There may be no cognate discipline -- it may not even be a sensible question in writing -- but I'm struck by how your writing process resembles my programming one...