 |
| Praise the lard! (It's a Zingerman's thing) |
After work though, it's back to writing, and currently I am working on the first draft of my young adult novel. First drafts are kind of annoying to be honest. You just sort of spew everything you can think of down on paper and hope that it is intelligible when you're finished. Generally the first draft is pure crap that you wouldn't allow anyone whom you had any amount of respect for to read.
It's the part of the process that makes most writer's feel as though they are complete and total failures with absolutely no talent who should just pack it up and quit. If they do summon the courage to bring a first draft to, say, a writer's group meeting or something, it is carefully handed over to their fellow comrades along with a barrage of explanations as to why it is not up to the standard that their work would be had they had the time to tweak it over and over again until it was just right. You can see the fear in their eyes matched with an expression that reads, “Please for the love of God, go easy on me! It's not finished yet! I swear I can do better!”
Our writing is our baby. We are protective parents not wanting to birth our creations prematurely. It's not ready! We shout inside our heads, the lungs aren't developed! Can we at least inject it with a dose of steroids before bringing it into the world so suddenly?
 |
| Aww...so precious! |
I guess anytime a person does something creative, they are exposing a part of their soul to others. We feel vulnerable and afraid that we will be judged. We want our creations to be a perfect specimen of our inner selves before boldly putting it on display.
The beauty of the first draft, however, is that it is where the magic happens. When we write about ourselves, it is almost like therapy. We are cathartically purging ourselves of the things that weigh heavily on our minds. Whether positive or negative thoughts, we just have to get them out.
When we are writing fiction, the first draft is where we are exploring, learning, and crafting this world that no one else knows about. It didn't even exist before our genius little muses whispered their existence into our ears. We meet people we never knew before; people whose appearance and mannerisms are so clear in our minds, but can't be found anywhere else in the universe. Some of these characters we love, and some we love to hate, but through this process of discovery we have reached our peak of creativity! It's after the first draft that all the work of making sure that what we have created actually means something to others as well.
It was after reading one of my pieces that a friend of mine once commented, “that is exactly how I feel, but I would never have been able to put it into words like that.” There in lies the magic that a talented writer can create. We all have a story to tell, it's how we tell the story that determines whether others will really want to read about it.
The craft of writing is 1 part talent, 2 parts hard work, and 1 part inspiration (yes, that is an exact formulation, in case you were wondering). It's through hard work that our talent and inspiration is truly reflected.
As writers we spend hours at our computers pouring over our work over and over again, and still it never quite seems finished. I think partly because every time we come back to it, we have grown a little bit—we have experienced something different, read something that influenced us, or met someone who inspired us. Our growth as human beings means that our writing will always be fluid. There is always something that can be perfected.
My advice to all writers is to not be afraid of the first draft. Don't let its complete crappiness deter you from doing the work to complete the process. There is beauty in every aspect of the writing process, especially in its fluidity, and you just never know what sort of impact your crappy writing may have on another human being whose life has not yet reached its final draft.
0 comments:
Post a Comment