Lately I've been reading a lot of posts, entries and tweets from my fellow writers in various stages of block, lack of inspiration, and despair. SO, to distract myself from actually writing, I'm giving you THIS:
Shitty First Drafts
Anne Lamott from
Bird by Bird
Born in San Francisco in 1954, Anne Lamott is a graduate of Goucher College
in
Baltimore and is the author of six novels, including Rosie (1983),
Crooked Little Heart (1997), All New People (2000), and Blue Shoes
(2002). In the following selection, taken from Lamott’s popular book
about writing, Bird by Bird (1994):
1
Now, practically
even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty
first drafts. All good writers write them. This is how they end up with
good second drafts and terrific third drafts. Peop le tend to look at
successful writers who are getting their books published and maybe even
doing well financially and think that they sit down at their desks every
morning feeling like a million dollars, feeling great about who they
are and how much talent they have and what a great story they have to
tell; that they take in a few deep breaths, push back their sleeves,
roll their necks a few times to get all the cricks out, and dive in,
typing fully formed passages as fast as a court reporter.
But
this is just the fantasy of the uninitiated. I know some very great
writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great
deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly
enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts.
All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do
not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can
even stand her. (Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom,
he said you can safely assume you've created God in your own image when
it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.)
2
Very
few writers really know what they are doing until they've done it. Nor
do they go about their business feeling dewy and thrilled. They do not
type a few stiff warm-up sentences and then find themselves bounding
along like huskies across the snow. One writer I know tells me that he
sits down every morning and says to himself nicely, "It's not like you
don't have a choice, because you do -- you can either type, or kill
yourself." We all often feel like we are pulling teeth, even those
writers whose prose ends up being the most natural and fluid. The right
words and sentences just do not come pouring out like ticker tape most
of the time. Now, Muriel Spark is said to have felt that she was taking
dictation from God every morning -- sitting there, one supposes, plugged
into a Dictaphone, typing away, humming. But this is a very hostile and
aggressive position. One might hope for bad things to rain down on a
person like this.
3
For me and most of the other writers I
know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything
written at all is to write
really, really shitty first drafts.
4
The
first draft is the child's draft, where you let it all pour out and
then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see
it and that you can shape it later. You just let this childlike part of
you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page.
If one of the characters wants to say, "Well, so what, Mr. Poopy
Pants?," you let her. No one is going to see it. If the kid wants to get
into really sentimental, weepy, emotional territory, you let him.
Just
get it all down on paper because there may be something great in those
six crazy pages that you would never have gotten to by more rational,
grown-up means. There may be something in the very last line of the very
last paragraph on page six that you just love, that is so beautiful or
wild that you now know what you're supposed to be writing about, more or
less, or in what direction you might go -- but there was no way to get
to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages.
5
I
used to write food reviews for California magazine before it folded.
(My writing food reviews had nothing to do with the magazine folding,
although every single review did cause a couple of canceled
subscriptions. Some readers took umbrage at my comparing mounds of
vegetable puree wi \th various ex-presidents' brains.) These reviews
always took two days to write. First I'd go to a restaurant several
times with a few opinionated, articulate friends in tow. I'd sit there
writing down everything anyone said that was at all interesting or
funny.
Then on the following Monday I'd sit down at my desk with
my notes and try to write the review. Even after I'd been doing this for
years, panic would set in. I'd try to write a lead, but instead
I'd write a couple of dreadful sentences, XX them out, try again, XX
everything out, and then feel despair and worry settle on my chest like
an x-ray apron.
It's over, I'd think calmly.
I'm not going to
be able to get the magic to work this time. I'm ruined. I'm through. I'm
toast. Maybe, I'd think, I can get my old job back as a clerk-typist.
But probably not. I'd get up and study my teeth in the mirror for a
while. Then I'd stop, remember to breathe, make a few phone calls, hit
the kitchen and chow down.
6.
Eventually I'd go back and sit
down at my desk, and sigh for the next ten minutes. Finally I would pick
up my one-inch picture frame, stare into it as if for the answer, and
every time the answer would come:
all I had to do was to write a really shitty first draft of, say, the opening paragraph. And no one was going to see it.
So
I'd start writing without reining myself in. It was almost just typing,
just making my fingers move. And the writing would be terrible. I'd
write a lead paragraph that was a whole page, even though the entire
review could only be three pages long, and then I'd start writing up
descriptions of the food, one dish at a time, bird by bird, and the
critics would be sitting on my shoulders, commenting like cartoon
characters. They'd be pretending to snore, or rolling their eyes at my
overwrought descriptions, no matter how hard I tried to tone those
descriptions down, no matter how conscious I was of what a friend said
to me gently in my early days of restaurant reviewing. "Annie," she
said, "it is just a piece of chicken. It is just a bit of cake ."
7
But
because by then I had been writing for so long, I would eventually let
myself trust the process -- sort of, more or less. I'd write a first
draft that was maybe twice as long as it should be, with a
self-indulgent and boring beginning, stupefying descriptions of the
meal, lots of quotes from my black-humored friends that made them sound
more like the Manson girls than food lovers, and no ending to speak of.
The
whole thing would be so long and incoherent and hideous that for the
rest of the day I'd obsess about getting creamed by a car before I could
write a decent second draft. I'd worry that people would read what I'd
written and believe that the accident had really been a suicide, that I
had panicked because my talent was waning and my mind was shot.
8
The
next day, I'd sit down, go through it all with a colored pen, take out
everything I possibly could, find a new lead somewhere on the second
page, figure out a kicky place to end it, and then write a second draft.
It always turned out fine, sometimes even funny and weird and helpful.
I'd go over it one more time and mail it in.
9
Then, a month
later, when it was time for another review, the whole process would
start again, complete with the fears that people would find my first
draft before I could rewrite it.
10
Almost all good writing begins with
terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something --
anything
-- down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the
down draft -- you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft --
you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And
the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see
if it's loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.
