TIL that first drafts are supposed to be terrible. I spent 3 weeks polishing chapter one.

I was sitting in a coffee shop in Portland last month, rewriting the same opening paragraph for the 15th time. A writer named Sarah at the next table asked what I was working on. She told me her first novel draft was 80% garbage and she just had to get the words down. Has anyone else spent way too long perfecting a first chapter before realizing you can't edit a blank page?

3 comments

3 Comments

lucasschmidt19d ago

oh man, i was doing the exact same thing. spent like a month on my first chapter, polishing every sentence until it sounded like i was trying to be some fancy writer. then i showed it to a friend and she was like "this is fine but what happens next?" and i realized i had nothing. zero plot. just a shiny door with no house behind it. now i just let it be bad. i call it my "ugly baby" stage and it saves so much time. seriously, writing garbage is way faster than trying to make garbage look good. you just gotta get it out and fix it later.

lopez.quinn19d ago

Ugly baby stage, I love that. I used to think every sentence had to be perfect right away but you just changed my mind completely.

ninas6718d ago

My third chapter is still in the ugly baby stage, and it's been there for like six months now. @lopez.quinn I think that door with no house behind it perfectly describes my whole writing process so far. I just stare at the screen and move commas around, pretending that's progress. Honestly, my ugly baby is starting to look more like a gargoyle at this point. But hey, at least I'm not trying to dress it up in fancy clothes anymore. Garbage on the page is better than nothing on the page, I guess.