Just Finish the Draft

When I got to conventions, I really love when young writers come to me for advice. To any writer, really. We all do better when we all do better, so I’m always happy to share what I’ve learned in my journey as a writer. I’m also always happy to learn from others.

Frequently, that conversation begins something like this.

“Oh, this books sounds so cool!” they say.

“Thanks!” I say.

“I’m an aspiring writer myself.”

“Aspiring?” I ask. “Are you writing?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re a writer. Forget about the aspiring bit.”

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It may seem pedantic, but I think how you perceive yourself is important to manifesting your will into the world, to motivating yourself to create that art that you love. The conversation will continue from there, an frequently, this young writer has been poking at a book for months or even years.

“I’m stuck,” they say. “I’ve been editing and editing the first few chapters. I’m just not happy with them.”

“Ah,” I say, doing my best impersonation of the sage archetype. “You need to stop editing and finish that first draft.”

Their eyes get wide. Fear sends them into cold sweats. Their mind is instantly filled with all the ways they don’t like those opening chapters, how they fall short of the book they’ve been reading. They can see the pile of rejections already.

But here’s the thing: novels are so big, your mind cannot contain the entire thing at once. You just cannot hold every detail as a cohesive idea at the same time. That also means that you cannot know the full shape of your story until you’ve finished that first draft.

Sure, you might know the ending. You might have plotted the whole thing out. But your characters are going to teach you some things along the way. That plot point you have in mind might not actually work. When you’re three chapters in, you might think of something, go back, and tweak the manuscript. But then when you’re seven chapters in, you’ll think of something else that changes it all again.

Finish that first draft. I know, it’s hard. All first drafts are shit. That’s just the rule. When you think of something you want to change in that first chapter, make a note of it, but keep going. That note WILL change. Probably multiple times. Once you’ve finished that first draft and really understand what your story is about, where it’s going, the full shape of it, then you’ll be ready to efficiently edit.

And edit.

And edit.

And edit and edit and edit and…you get the idea.

In the end, it all boils down to this. The very first piece of writing advice that anyone should ever receive is to just keep writing. One word after the next. No other advice matters if you don’t finish that story.