Write The Shitty First Draft
“One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore. Another is that writing motivates you to look closely at life, at life as it lurches by and tramps around.”
-Anne Lamott
It’s time to stop talking about what we are going to write about, the things holding us back and how we should keep ourselves accountable. It’s time to press the ink pen against the white sheet of paper to make it bleed its luscious color onto the blank page.
There is no room for comparisonitis, the bold ego that demands us to carefully select the perfectly crafted sentence, nor caressing the thesaurus laying three inches away. It is time to write the shitty first draft.
The first draft is and will be shit. It is a period of dumping your thoughts onto the page, developing characters, wrestling the sloppy word-mongers to the ground, embellishing your intelligence, re-telling the over-exaggerated events of what you perceived happened in the backseat of the car at the drive-in movie, setting the scenes and figuring out the flow of the seasons. This is where you lay it all out so you can play the role of a highly skilled surgeon or hungover meat butcher on a Monday morning once the shitty first draft is complete.
“But I also tell [my students] that sometimes when my writer friends are working, they feel better and more alive than they do at any other time. And sometimes when they are writing well, they feel that they are living up to something. It is as if the right words, the true words, are already inside them, and they just want to help them get out. Writing this way is a little like milking a cow: the milk is so rich and delicious, and the cow is so glad you did it.”
-Anne Lamott
So this is your que. Pick up the pen and find some paper (or open a blank document on your computer), and allow the words you’ve had bottled up breathe and come to life.
It’s time to unleash your story.
Are you ready to dedicate time, energy, and creative imagination to completing that written project you’ve been hoping to finish one day?
For authors, bloggers, copywriters, freelancers, those who love to journal and anyone who has a deep passion to write.
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