The Process of Writing a First Draft

Writing a Rough Draft of a Novel or Memoir

Photo by Mari Potter on Unsplash

One of the hardest—in my experience as both a published author and professional book editor—concepts in book creation is the completion of The First Draft.

In some ways this seems strange to me. Really, at least from my perspective now, I see writing the first draft as, if not exactly “easy,” then definitely fun. It’s the whole package of Art Creation. You get to write completely uninhibited, with no one looking over your shoulder, and you get to say whatever you want. This generally allows for a feeling of control. Most writers produce prose because they enjoy the illusion of control in an otherwise out of control reality. In fiction, we can do what we want. In reality, we are constrained and restricted.

The hard part for many writers is giving themselves “permission” to actually finish a first draft. The first thing to acknowledge is that writing a book—novel, memoir, biography, self-help, you name it—is a massive undertaking. One of the many myths and fallacies of the 21^st century around book writing—and in this regard I blame social media, the digitization of the submission process, self-publishing, etc—is the notion that writing a book is “easy,” and that virtually anyone can do it, from your 12-year-old daughter to your 85-year-old grandfather, neither of whom have ever written a word prior.

This idea is, quite simply, bullshit.

The sooner you realize a few things about book creation the better off you’ll be in the process:

1.    Writing a book is hard. It takes a lot of skill. You have to spend years honing your craft, reading and mimicking other authors, taking writing classes, joining workshops, following a writing regimen/discipline, etc.

2.    Writing a book takes great, great patience. As a book editor I have encountered so many new, impatient writers who think they can just churn out a book in a month or two, self-publish it, and become The Next Hemingway, etc.

3.    Understand that the mechanics of writing are crucial: Aka understanding grammar, diction, syntax, how to write authentic dialogue, plot and structure, character and story ARCs, inner and outer journeys, hurdles, tension, etc. So much goes into the working of a good, sticky novel (“sticky” meaning attractive to readers who therefore can’t stop reading).

4.    Try to be humble. Realize that writing, like many other subtle crafts (and writing is a craft) often “seems” easy, but doing it even decently is anything but easy or simple.

This is why I feel that the first draft is relatively “easy” and “fun.” Stephen King said to write hot and edit cold. What he meant was: Remove all constraints when writing your first draft. Just sit down at the computer and let yourself write. Allow the characters to do what they do, say what they say, etc. Allow the story to organically unfurl as it feels it should. Try to hold the inner critic, the inner perfectionist, the inner Judge, at bay. Just allow yourself to write.

Largely this is true because many new writers find even just the process of completing a book close to impossible. They spend weeks, months and even years bogged down by a chapter or two, or figuring out an ending, or polishing the sentences, etc. Don’t do that. Instead, trust your intuition. While good writing is definitely “about” the mechanics I mentioned, it’s also very much about emotion, gut feelings, and going where it feels true and right. Trust that, especially in the first draft. Write “hot,” as King said.

Since one of the hardest things to do is to complete a draft—no matter how rough, sloppy and terrible it may be—the idea is give yourself permission to first simply finish a book. Writing something that’s 60,000, 80,000, 100,000 words or more is a massive undertaking that the vast majority of people on Earth will never attempt. (Or want to.) You’re covering a lot of territory. Literarily and symbolically speaking, it’s like attempting to walk across the United States from one side to the other. It feels vast, terrifying and daunting. Yet once you feel out into the empty open space, you’ll feel slowly more comfortable and eventually you’ll adjust and get used to the myriad changes of environment, from superhighways to wilderness to farms to mountains to major throbbing cities to open empty plains. This is what it’s like to write a book.

Once you have a first rough draft, congratulate yourself, go get a drink at the bar, and stuff the manuscript away in a drawer somewhere, either literally or figuratively (on your computer as a file). Then wait. I recommend 3-6 months at a minimum. Longer if you can hold it. This goes back to what King said, yet again, about writing hot, editing cold.

In six months, say, or whenever you return to the first draft, you’ll now be seeing the project with clearer, more objective eyes. Now, because humans have natural bias, and because it’s our own work, we’ll never be fully objective. But, due to the time we haven’t looked at it, and the other things of life which have occupying our minds during the gap between manuscript completion and rereading it, we’ll have regained a good portion of our more or less objective analytical mind.

And this is when you “edit cold.” If you write with a hot, firey passion during that first fun draft, after six months when you lug the thing out and take another look: This is when the red pencil, so to speak, comes out and you analyze what’s working, what’s not working, what needs to be changed, added, adjusted, removed, etc. Sometimes you may have a fairly solid first draft and you don’t have a year of work ahead. But, more likely, especially for new writers, you’ll have massive changes to make. Sometimes you may have to chuck the whole project into the symbolic trash. It may be all unusable. But I find this to be not that common.

Usually it’s a mix, say 40/60, 40% usable, 60% not, or maybe 50/50. Either way, what you have is a first draft, a place from which to move forward. It’s typical to spend many years on a book, working hard on it, editing, revising, clipping, cutting, adding, altering, adding and subtracting characters, messing with the plot, forging the right literary voice (which is crucial), etc. And sometimes even taking breaks loses its edge and you may have to move on to other projects for a couple years in order to retain that sense of semi-objectivity required to see your manuscript somewhat clearly and therefore make appropriate changes.

There’s also the idea of hiring someone like me; a developmental book editor.

Now, this can be a good or bad idea. It really just depends. You have to ask yourself a few questions:

1.    Do you want (and can you afford) to pay $2,000-3,000 (roughly) for one round of suggested edits/revision/changes on an early (but not first) draft? A good dev editor can offer you a LOT of helpful feedback on your nascent book and can help you navigate through the struggles of moving in the right direction. But it costs.

2.    Do you truly feel you need a freelance professional to held guide your book, or do you think you yourself, via the Internet, books and your own direct practice, can guide yourself?

3.    What kind of feedback are specifically needing? If you feel your plot and structure are basically more or less solid, and all you need help with is sharper dialogue and more tension, you might not necessarily be best served by a developmental editor. Instead, you might research on your own, read some books which utilize these aspects and mimic what they do, and carve out these things on your own using direct practice over time.

So, as you can see: There are “many ways to skin a cat.” It’s up to you what feels most effective. But the one concept I still think is key is: Let yourself finish that first draft.