More Advice on First Drafts: 8 Quotes to Inspire

clip art courtesy pixabay

"The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible." --Vladamir Nabokov

Work on the first draft of current WIP is progressing but, depending on the day--or week, words flow or words dry up. Pages have scribblings (I'm handwriting this first draft!) or are left half-blank. We've talked about this before (here and here), but the first draft can seem so...well...blank. I'm in need of a shot of encouragement again. How about you? We're in good company, you know...

1. Begin. "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it." --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

2. Close the door. "Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer." --Barbara Kingsolver

3. Take chances. "Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good." --William Faulkner

4. Jump off cliffs--and grow wings. "We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down." --Kurt Vonnegut

5. Develop intestinal fortitude. "Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." --Silvia Plath

6. Get yourself a club. "You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club." --Jack London

7. Raise rabbits. "Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen." --John Steinbeck

8. Wear ear plugs. "Don't listen to people who tell you that very few people get published and you won't be one of them. Don't listen to your friend who says you are better than Tolkien and don't have to try any more. Keep writing, keep faith in the idea that you have unique stories to tell, and tell them." --Robin Hobb

And keep the end goal in sight, that's what I keep telling myself. Each word gets you closer! Even if the ending holds some surprises you couldn't fathom at the beginning:

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." --Douglas Adams

Any words of advice you could share on staying the course? How do you resist giving up on that elusive first draft?

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On Snow and Writing: Sift, Shift, and Shape

February 2015

"It sifts from Leaden Sieves-
It powders all the Wood
It fills with Alabaster Wool
The Wrinkles of the road..."
---Emily Dickinson, It Sifts from Leaden Sieves (311)

Snow, it keeps on coming down. Not as accumulative here as in the New England states this winter (thankfully), but coming down nevertheless. Six to seven inches already today and it's still falling. It does look a bit as Emily Dickinson portrayed it: sifting from leaden sieves. Beautiful imagery.

Funny, but if you look closely at the above picture--and when I first saw it I wasn't sure what I was looking at--you will see what appears to be a light brown blotch in the middle of the cedar, a tree that randomly sprouted by the edge of our driveway and which I haven't had the heart to let hubby cut down. Too late, and too tall, it already impedes the path to the garage door. But, oh, well--turns out it is a haven for this, the creature nestled there during the recent snowfall.

Tucked in and hunkered down, this soft brown dove chose a unique vantage point to watch the snow sift, and shift. Why, I mused, was she sticking her beak out on such a cold, unwelcoming day? What was so spellbounding that she'd come out of her cocoon to look around? The snow drifted down like flour from a sifter. The landscape shifted shapes like a lumpy cake batter mix.

Sift. Shift. Shape. First drafts involve those same concepts, don't they? I posted about first drafts a few weeks ago (New Year, New Draft: 14 Tips to Grow It). The process of writing my draft continues. Words on paper, story slowly unfolding. I'm still doing all those things I wrote about then--like planting seeds, plowing through, watering. Now I'm sifting and shifting. What am I doing, writing a book, planting a garden, or baking a cake? What will be the end result?

I don't know yet, but as I continue to write through this story, I've resisted burrowing into my cedar cave and giving up. I feel a little bit like the dove--I'm sticking my head out and testing the possibilities. Along the way I continue to gather bits of inspiration on the writing process:

1. Sift. One definition of sift is "to scatter or sprinkle through or by means of a sieve." In other words, give it time; test the possibilities.  "It is common wisdom," Melanie Faith writes in Sifting Through: Writing a Way Into and Through Stalled Pieces, "that it takes time to make life experiences into literature. Rarely can a masterful piece of writing emerge wholly formed immediately after an event. Reflection, space, perspective--these are not immediately forthcoming but necessary for crafting a piece with meaning and resonance for the reader."

2. Shift. But don't stew. Don't get anxious. Jane Smiley, interviewed by Writer's Digest's Paula Deimling in The All-True Result of Loving to Write, said, "...The paradox is that you can't commit yourself until you get rid of your performance anxiety. And the only way you can commit yourself to something is to become so interested in it that all ego considerations disappear and you can feel yourself fully engaged. That's the state in which all your best writing is done."

3. Shape. What's your favorite tip on how to "shape" a novel? James Scott Bell, in 5 Tools for Building Conflict in Your Novel, shares one tool from Sue Grafton: "One of my theories about writing," Mr. Bell quotes her as saying, "is that the process involves an ongoing interchange between left brain and right. The novel journal provides a testing ground where the two can engage." In her journal, Grafton notes things about her life, jots down ideas that come to her, records where she is in her book, explores scenes and trouble spots. She keeps records of details that help her shape her books. A novel journal has proved to be very helpful for me in sorting through and shaping my thoughts, too.

So here we are, on another snowy day, sifting, shifting, and shaping. The snow's doing just that very thing outside. A similar process is going on inside.

How's the process going for you?

Stay warm, little dove!

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New Year, New Draft: 14 Tips to Grow It

photo courtesy pixabay

"I hate first drafts, and it never gets easier. People always wonder what kind of superhero power they'd like to have. I wanted the ability for someone to just open up my brain and take out the entire first draft and lay it down in front of me so I can just focus on the second, third, and fourth drafts." --Judy Blume

We had all five grandkids in the house over the recent holidays in different stages, different combinations, different numbers of days. Happy times (well, except for the flu bug that visited some family members--we could have done without that), albeit messy. Let me count the ways: legos, bristle blocks, books, puzzles, markers, scissors, glue, Whoonu game chips, all that wrapping paper, random lost socks, and spilled flour during a cookie baking session. But I wouldn't have it any other way! Planting seeds in the soil of family is always a good thing.

Can I be as positive in this new year about the new draft I've decided to tackle--I mean really tackle and not just talk about? It promises to be messy, too. In preparation, I "dug up" tips to help me weed through its mess--which I offer to you, too, hoping they'll help you in turn.

14 Tips to Help Grow That First (Messy) Draft

1. Put Your Boots On. You know it'll be messy. You face knee-deep frustration and feelings of inadequacy. But there's a first step. START. Like Pixar's Emma Coates says: "Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you'll never share it with anyone."

2. Plant the Seeds.  Put down words and let them germinate. Don't edit. Don't stew. Sow seeds you will later fix. "The first draft is just you telling yourself the story." --Terry Pratchett

3. Get Your Hands Dirty. Hubby used to watch Master Gardener Rebecca Kolls talk about gardening on TV. He especially liked her signature sign-off: "Get out there and get your hands dirty." Same with our first draft. We just have to dig in no matter how unpromising the pages seem at first. Darcy Pattison explains her process in Awful First Draft: It's Hard to Trust the Process this way: "Most of all, I remember: the purpose of the first draft is to figure out what story you are telling. The purpose of all other drafts is to figure out the most dramatic way to tell that story...I am trusting the process and writing a really lousy first draft."

4. Go With the Wind. Elizabeth Sims, in Writer's Digest's Get Messy With Your First Draft says it this way: 'learn to love anarchy.' She explains, "Ignore the sequence while writing your first draft...Nothing is as freeing as writing what comes to mind next, not necessarily what must come next...the first execution of your ideas must be as unfettered as possible. Which will result in--yes!--some crap: false starts, pretentiousness, clunky images and cliches. Fine. Get them out now. They'll contaminate the good stuff only until you get around to your second draft."

5. Greet the Sun. This is one of my main targets this year. In Write That First Draft: 6 Ways to Generate Material for Your Book, Huffington Post's Lisa Tener says make the time: "You want to talk bills? Kids? Out-of-town guests, day jobs, commutes? At times it seems life was designed explicitly to obstruct us from writing...So when I do manage to set time aside to write, I stick to it. I keep my writing appointments." And what about penciling in that time first thing in the morning? Will Self makes a point: "I prefer to write as soon as possible after waking, so that the oneiric inscape is still present to me." (Okay, I admit, I had to look this one up. Oneiric [adj]: of or having to do with dreams; inscape [n]: an interior view or scene.)

6. Thin the Rows. In other words, don't worry about length the first time through. "I generally write a first draft that's pretty lean," Nora Roberts is quoted as saying. "Just get the story down."

7. Shovel. I love this quote by Shannon Hale: "I'm writing my first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles." Keep shoveling!

8. Shake it Out. Elizabeth Sims again (see #4): "Get Loose. Relax, physically and mentally. If, as I do, you write your first drafts longhand, consider your pen a paintbrush. Hold it relaxed in your hand and move it from your shoulder instead of with your fingers. Your whole arm will move freely, and you'll pour out the words...Legibility is overrated. Remember that."

9. Plow. As in plow on through, surprises await. "Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised." --John Steinbeck

10. Water. It's okay to step away, take a breath, let the story work its magic in the subconscious. Ernest Hemingway advocated reading during such breaks: "When I was writing, it was necessary for me to read after I had written. If you kept thinking about it, you would lose the thing you were writing before you could go on with it the next day...I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it." Go to the well of reading. It will help.

11. Water Some More. Annie Dillard, from her book The Writing Life, admonishes: "One of the few things I know about writing is this, spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a  later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water."

12. Enjoy the Fruit. Have fun! Again, from Tener (above): "This probably seems like the most obvious one. If you're having fun, if you're experiencing the joy of discovery at all, then that freshness and excitement will be contained in the work you are creating. If you've made the time, you know how many other things you could be doing, but tonight or today you get to write. There's fun to be had. It is up to you to have it."

13. Harvest. It's simple wisdom, but as Julie Musil said in her blog post Why a Messy First Draft is a Great Thing: "A messy first draft means you've finished a book." Yes!

So where does this bring us? Why, to...hope for the second draft.

14. Celebrate the Bounty. Messy first drafts offer more than we first think. As Sims concludes, "If you practice looseness and receptivity when writing your first draft, the day will come during revisions when you realize you have a surplus of good writing to sort through." Good to know! Like rain on parched fields, there's hope in what we planted, propelling us to the next step.

So slog through that first draft. Don't let it get you down. And one last word of advice: "The first draft reveals the art, revision reveals the artist" (Michael Lee). So, in the next few months, I'm wearing my boots and getting my hands dirty in the mess of my first draft--and then on to the second. How about you? Are you ready to dig in and grow something with words, too?

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First Drafts and Writer's Block, An Antidote

"Writing a first draft is very much like watching a Polaroid develop. You can't--and in fact, you're not supposed to--know exactly what the picture is going to look like until it has finished developing." --Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

I love this quote. And I'm adopting Ms. Lamott's approach this week as I continue on the first draft of my current project. I think the analogy to a Polaroid photo is a sure-fire antidote against writer's block. It takes the pressure off of having to line out the story in too much detail ahead of time, and promises to re-ignite the sense of discovery. Can't wait to see what picture develops!

Are you battling writer's block, or are scenes emerging? Any surprises coming to light?  (photo: sxc.hu)

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