Late one evening, just before bed, you’re struck by a brainwave. It’s an idea for a story based on your lived experience. Something imaginative yet true. You start jotting it down in an unexpectedly lengthy and impassioned few pages, expanding on some of the points, surprising yourself with your insight and eloquence. You realise these thoughts have been brewing for quite some time.

You finish the outburst and close your notebook elated. As you climb into bed you feel calm in the knowledge that you’ve captured something true, something meaningful that hasn’t been expressed in such a way before — perhaps it’s the start of a memoir? You’ve arrived at a new understanding and are certain this clarity will now be a permanent state. Writing the rest of the story, you think, will be easy.

The following day you wake happy. Over breakfast you linger, knowing you’re ahead of the game, that you’ve already solved something knotty and difficult. You’re looking forward to diving back into the story and coasting on through to the end.

Then you take out the draft and as you read through it your heart starts to shrink in your ribcage. Your stomach turns leaden. Some weird crawling insect traverses your skin. All the joy of the previous evening dissolves as you realise what you have written is crap. You are embarrassed and sad. You thought you were smart, but you’re clearly deluded. Terror strikes at the thought of somebody reading this. Your soul burns with shame. You vow never to show it to anyone.

What the hell happened? Let me explain.

1.    Hello Ego, My Old Friend

Here, your creativity has been hijacked by a troublesome aspect of your personality: your ego.

Poor ego. It’s just trying to help you survive in the world, land you a job, get you laid. It’s a basic beast, not terribly nuanced. Full of bluster and bravado, it has some truly grandiose notions.

But the ego is easily spooked. It hates feeling vulnerable and is terrified of humiliation. If it gets even a whiff of possible failure — that your grand vision may be harder to achieve than you first thought, for instance, or the outcome compromised in any way — then ego hits the panic button and demands you abandon the course immediately. It directs you to hide under the doona in a fug of shame, or get SUPER BUSY doing things you’re already excellent at, or perhaps just stalk around coldly wearing a mask of indifference.

Ego’s job is to protect us. But its instrument is fear, and fear is a blunt instrument. Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Big Magic, talks wisely about how she manages the ever-present fear and anxiety she experiences around her creativity. Her strategy is to talk directly to her fear, treat it like an old friend. She’ll say, Thank you fear, for looking out for me. I’ve heard what you have to say, and I’m going to do this anyway.

2.    All First Drafts Are Crap

Nobody spits out an elegant first draft. This is a known fact among professionals, and why writers do 5, 8, 10 drafts. Seriously. Different drafts serve different purposes. Draft one captures your raw ideas and wild energy. Subsequent drafts are a process of refinement. They deepen your analysis, clarify your expression, sharpen your style and, most importantly, figure out what the hell it is you’re actually trying to say.  

In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott’s seminal book on writing, she devotes a whole chapter to this, called Shitty First Drafts. ‘All good writers write them,’ she insists. ‘This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts.’

From my experience, Draft Three will be 3 times better than Draft One. It’s that simple. So don’t despair — your crappy first draft contains the seeds of something worthwhile, something interesting and valuable that will eventually bloom when you get to work redrafting.

3.      Good Writing Requires Vulnerability

Unfortunately, experience does not inoculate you against the discomfort of flawed writing. I’m in the guts of it now, the second draft of my second novel, tearing my hair out. I’ve done so much writing already. I know there’s good stuff in there, but it feels like an impossible task to figure out how to make it all work beautifully. I wish more than anything that it would write itself, that I could wake in the morning, Rumpelstiltskin style, and there it would be, laying in a perfect pile on my desk. I feel as vulnerable as I did when I wrote my first novel and I hate it.

World-famous social work researcher, Brené Brown, defines vulnerability as,  ‘Uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure.’ She goes on, ‘But vulnerability is not weakness; it's our most accurate measure of courage…Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.’

Have a listen to Brown’s Unlocking Us podcast episode, Brené on Day 2. She explores the notion of a ‘Day 2’ stage in any process. It comes after the thrilling, white-knuckle ride of Day 1, when you’re just starting out and have plenty of energy for the task. Day 2, Brown explains, is the unavoidable ‘messy middle’, the point where we feel tired, uncertain and confused. Day 2 we are stumbling around in the dark, wishing more than anything that we could avoid this part and just skip to the end, where triumph and redemption lie. Brown points out that, however chaotic and uncomfortable Day 2 feels, this is also ‘where the magic happens’. She draws interesting parallels to this stage in storytelling and the creative process.

Many writers stall at Day 2. After writing our first draft, which we flew through in a state of happy abandon, riding the warm currents of imagination and memory, we realise that we have only scratched the surface. We can see that we have more work to do, but we’re not sure how to go about it, and this leaves us feeling awkward, inept and exposed. By identifying this sense of intense vulnerability as simply a natural stage in the creative process — a stage necessary for innovation — we can then learn to suck it up and keep writing.

4.    You Need Another Set Of Eyes

Writing and reading are dual components of storytelling, intrinsically linked. But no matter how clearly an idea exists in your head, it doesn’t always come across clearly to others on the page, no matter how gifted a writer you may be.

Great writing doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Showing your imperfect words to someone else — a friend who reads, a writing group buddy, a writing coach or professional editor — can only make them better. You need to allow some oxygen around your sentences, reality checks on your plot lines, gentle push-back on your biases and blind spots. Even if the feedback you receive is frustratingly vague (‘I didn’t really understand this bit’; ‘I’m not sure I believe your character would do such a thing’), it reveals where your reader has snagged in the flow of your story. If you address these snags, spend more time unpicking or pruning, then your next draft will be stronger, no question.

Now, you may be resisting this advice. You may still be wedded to the idea that you’re the sort of exceptional writer who works alone and doesn’t need feedback, someone who won’t risk tainting your creative vision with anyone else’s impressions. If so, you are labouring under the romanticised and wholly incorrect myth of the genius artist in the garret. I’m afraid you’ll never find much of a readership — no author is that talented or special. That is ego gone rogue, and it will not serve your creative purposes. You’ll likely join the ranks of the self-published who, in order to save money, avoided paying for professional editing and are now wondering why nobody wants their books. Honestly, they probably just needed to write a couple more drafts.

5.     It’s Only a Technical Issue

For such a long time, whenever I hit a difficult patch in my writing my tendency was to catastrophize, and question myself as an artist. My work is crap! I’m incapable, worthless; a fool to think otherwise! I believed that writing had defeated me. Then one day I came across a remark from Helen Garner on her approach to drafting and it brought me to my senses, like a slap in the face delivered by a sane person: “It’s a technical issue, not an existential one.”

Weak writing has technical issues. These issues can be solved eventually, often by throwing away all the work we have done and starting again. But the thought of doing this is so horribly repugnant that our psyche tries to protect us from the effort. Up jumps ego again, blustering in, indignant at the thought of more work. We throw up our hands when we should be rolling up our sleeves.

Writing is a discipline. To write well requires vulnerability, courage and commitment.

So don’t worry that your draft is crap. You can make it better. Just thank your fear for looking out for you, get some feedback, then sit down and write another draft.

A.F.

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