Notice I didn’t write “IF the first draft falls apart.”
At the time of this blogging, my first draft looks like this “car”:
The temptation is to go back to the beginning and correct the multitude of errors before I reach the end of this disaster. Here’s why I don’t do that anymore:
- Having a finished draft, although too embarrassing to share with anyone, is still an accomplishment. I’ll need that feather in my cap when the rewrites reach the stage of complete chaos and I’m ready to quit.
- Experience has taught me that as impossible as it seems to fill the plot holes, redirect the contradictions, and remember all the invented facts I forgot, it will eventually coalesce if I keep moving forward.
- It’s difficult to see, but as I progress through the book, it is getting better. Rewrites and edits in the first half of the book are always the trickiest. The parts I’m writing now will need work, but not to the same degree. Better to continue forward until the end.
My inner perfectionist panics at this stage. Some tricks/tools for shutting her up:
- I use Scrivener, which allows notes to be kept with any chapter or scene. Instead of taking the time to search for an earlier reference, I can make notes: “Find that woman’s name! Did I describe this place already? What color are his eyes? This character has apparently had a frontal lobotomy–fix this.”
- Keeping more than one project going is a good idea for the inner perfectionist. No, I can’t repair my first draft right now, but a short story could be edited and submitted. The perfectionist is happy.
- Take a break. Clean the toilet. Bake. Watch a movie. Eat a can of Pringles. Something my inner perfectionist can feel a sense of completion about.
It is my belief (and I may be wrong) that many unfinished manuscripts remain unfinished because the first draft is overwhelming. It is easier to give up than take control of characters with minds of their own and a plot that once made sense and now seems ridiculous. Maybe the book is a bad idea, but it’s impossible to know from a first draft. (On the dark side, it’s necessary to devote hours to a book that shouldn’t be written, too. Let’s not delve deeper into that possibility.)
I think of my first draft as a young child. She is illogical, eager to lie to exalt herself, likely to defend her faults for fear of consequences, and most importantly, will lie to me if it suits her wishes. She has potential, though. She can’t be tried as an adult until she has matured–have to give the first draft a chance to grow.
