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When you are writing your first draft:
- “that part isn’t good enough” is the voice of your enemy.
- “I should go back and edit that” is the voice of your enemy.
- “this part is too cliche” is the voice of your enemy.
- “this part is unclear” is the voice of your enemy.
- “this dialogue sounds bad” is the voice of your enemy.
- “there isn’t enough detail” is the voice of your enemy.
- “I’m bogged down in the details” is the voice of your enemy.
- “I don’t know what happens next” is the voice of your enemy.
- “no one will want to read this” is the voice of your enemy.
These are second draft problems.
Write it down! Finish the draft!
“Is it any good” is future-you’s problem!
This is a great stance for some writers to have. I know this works for a great number of people.
But this is not the only way to write a first draft.
There are just as many people who will not finish a first draft unless they do edit as they go. There are people who must put in the details as they go or it will mess up their rhythm and how they proceed through their story. There are people who will keep track of events and make sure everything flows in their first draft otherwise they cannot write it because their brain is not wired to take a heap of ideas and vague notions and missing subtext in brackets and turn it into something later.
Whichever way someone writes should be the way that lets them finish a draft in the first place. Writing isn’t rigid and neither are these rules. If this works for you to push detail oriented things and revisions to a second draft? GREAT! I’m happy you found out the way that works for you. This will not work for everyone though, and we need to respect different processes as equals in the field and not just exceptions to the rule.
Absolutely! Everyone’s different and you need to do what works for you!
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