Should You Rush to Write the First Draft?

Should you rush to write the first draft?

Let me begin this blog post by saying that I have lived by the idea that writers should just get their crappy first draft over with and stop worrying about it so much. I have dedicated several Novembers to NaNoWriMo for this reason. However, after producing almost a dozen imperfect manuscripts, I’m starting to rethink this process.

Every time you sit down to write, you become a better writer. So, I know I’m not alone here. It’s hard to go back to a draft that you hate. It makes you feel like that draft was a complete waste of time. The first year that I officially participated in NaNoWriMo, I sat down and wrote around 80,000 words and celebrated. The 80,000 words in my head were far different from that ones that ended up on the page. When I decided to dive into the second draft, I was overwhelmed by how much was missing. I’m not just talking about plot points here. There were sentences that skipped words entirely, missed punctuation, characters that changed names halfway through the novel, the list goes on. I’m a little more experienced now and I recognize these as classic amateur mistakes. Sometimes you are typing at the speed of light, but your brain moves a lot faster than your fingers. I tried to clean up that manuscript, send it to beta readers, and ended up even more disappointed that they all hated parts of the novel. I tucked it away on the shelf never to be looked at again (until recently, but I’ll get to that later.)

While I had stored that word-garbage novel some place that I wouldn’t come across it and have it ruin my day, I didn’t give up writing. I continued pumping out manuscripts, sometimes two a month. I can’t remember exactly how many I wrote that first year (I want to say 7 or 8, but I’m too lazy to go look), but only one of them actually became something. Mythical Investigations was a lot easier to write and rewrite because it was a smaller project. I had written it with the intent of it being a similar experience to sitting down and watching an episode of a show. It wasn’t supposed to be this expansive, plot heavy book. It was supposed to be fun, different, surprising. I also wrote the next three manuscripts, that were to follow Mythical Investigations, and a prequel from one of the side character’s point-of-views. I don’t like any of them, so I’m writing them again.

There is a difference between the writer I was between 2015 and today. I’ve learned a lot about writing and rewriting. In order to remedy my inability to rewrite my drafts, I started beta reading for dozens of other authors. It was easy to see their mistakes and recommend ways they could fix them. I took a step back from writing and starting as an editorial intern at a small press publisher. I will have completed 6 months with them in August. I also reached out to one of the editors there and asked if she would teach me a thing or two about editing and let me work with her as a freelance editor. It is much easier to find creative ways to fix issues in a manuscript when you aren’t the one that is going to do the work.

Now, I have the tools to revisit those manuscripts without feeling completely overwhelmed. I have even decided to rewrite that first 80,000-word fantasy novel. This experience has taught me that writing a first draft doesn’t make you a writer, continuing to rewrite your drafts does.

So, should you rush to finish that first draft?

There’s nothing wrong with participating in programs like NaNoWriMo or pledging to finish that draft in a month. However, consider your own skill set and be realistic with yourself. If you will struggle to rewrite that draft, you may go nowhere fast. You might be able to sit down and rewrite it. You might consider paying an editor to do a developmental edit for you. If you don’t know, a developmental edit looks at the big picture plot issues before you are overwhelmed you the line-by-line grammar errors that are fixed in a content edit. I highly suggest this if you don’t know where to begin with editing that draft.

To answer the question, I would say no. Don’t rush to finish that first draft. It doesn’t matter if you finish it in a few weeks or a few months. It will probably still be difficult to read. Don’t agonize over every word and rewrite each sentence a dozen times. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs be at a level where you can handle going back and reading it later. If you hate that manuscript before it’s even done with, you won’t want to edit it. Whatever you do, don’t submit that first draft that you can’t stand reading. If you can’t get through the first few chapters, don’t fool yourself into thinking that an agent or editor will.

There’s a happy medium here, between hot garbage and pearls, and you must trust that you will get there. Writing takes time and experience. I don’t regret writing out all those manuscripts. However, I did spend an absurd amount of time agonizing over how to rewrite them. That experience taught me that I love doing developmental editing, just because you type “the end” doesn’t mean the book is finished, and that you should tackle editing with the same passion that you do writing.

If I were to do it all over again, I would have started the process a little slower. I began with poetry and short stories, so the leap should have been to novellas instead of to an expansive high fantasy novel. I wasn’t ready to write that novel yet. When I wrote Mythical Investigations, it was a natural progression from the many short stories I had written. It’s around 100 pages, which is much easier to edit and rewrite than 500 pages. I might not have explored editing, if I had done it this way, but I would have saved myself a few years of frustration.

The advice I’m trying to give, is to not be afraid of starting small. If the idea of rewriting a huge novel a dozen times turns your stomach, accept that you aren’t ready to write it yet. Let the process come naturally because it looks different for every person. Good luck.