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Writer's pictureMark Sanders

When your first draft really is a first draft

Have I been going about this whole thing wrong all along?


It is a well-measured truth of writing that all writers work by a highly individualized process that cannot be fully imitated or duplicated by another writer. One of the primary philosophies of writing that I teach as an English professor is that all writing is a subjective creative process, and as writers, we must find what works best for us and follow that process.


But what happens when you discover your process is wrong?


Or is it really? Have I been going about the process of writing novels wrong from the beginning, or is it because I'm working on my third novel that I'm starting to discover what works and what doesn't? It's quite possible that like most things in life, the more you do them, the more your process changes through experience. Okay, enough vague allusions...first an analogy, then the specific discussion of what's happening with the new book.


When I first started playing drums with other musicians about 18 years ago, my focus was on keeping a steady tempo and not screwing up the whole band. I listened to hundreds of songs, memorizing not just the rhythms but the lyrics and structure of each and every song so that during a rehearsal, I could get everything precisely correct. I played with a great deal of technical precision, and I was even praised by many band mates for my musicianship, but I really wasn't that creative.


Over time, however, all the repetitive memorization allowed me to create rhythms of my own, to improvise, to change familiar patterns into unfamiliar beats. I don't really worry about the technical details of a song anymore; it's much more about the connection with the other musicians and how I can be a part of what they're doing. I can now happily sit in with a band and jump into whatever groove they're trying to produce.


Do I need to tell you that the second way is so much more fun?


So now the specifics...I've never been a draft-and-revise kind of writer. My process, informed by decades of academic writing, has always been plan, research, outline, compose and correct (not "draft"), and finally, edit and proofread. There was never a step for revision because it wasn't necessary. I knew what I wanted to write before I sat down; it was already on the page in the form of an outline. All that was left was, as I've told my writing classes for years, "nouns, verbs, and adjectives."


But my experience with discovery as part of the process of writing my second novel has led me to do as little prior outlining as possible. Each chapter is given a number of skeleton details that I think will come into play, but the writing itself is more improvisational than I've ever worked before. Each time at the computer is a discovery that leads to more surprises because I'm not imposing a rigid outline of tasks to the creative time.


Where this has also led me is to the realization that I'm writing a rough draft. I know I'm writing scenes that are incomplete, but instead of hanging around and feeling stuck, I'm moving on to the next event because I know that something will come up that will spark an idea to make that previous scene complete. But I'm not going back and writing it now; I'm saving that for the revision. I'm not even going back and making correction I know I need—I changed a "duke" to an "earl" out of historical necessity, but I'll fix the earlier missteps when I revise my first draft.


I always hated the idea of revision in high school and college. Revision is for people who aren't good enough to get it right the first time...that's what I always thought. It made the writing like my early drumming—technically correct but rather bloodless. This time around, though, I'm embracing the imperfection of the first draft. I know that once I get to the end of the story, I'll put it in a drawer for a month or two, and then I'll get to come back and re-experience the creative process for a second time, adding and subtracting but still making new discoveries, still listening to the voice of the Muse.


Do I need to tell you that the second way is so much more fun?

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Lisa Joële
Lisa Joële
Sep 20, 2019

It's tempting for me to use ALL of the words I enjoy, when the real power is using as few as possible to land the punch. I'm speaking here about my amateur attempts at poetry, as my more serious time commitments have been devoted to the visual arts - another platform for birthing new worlds. I'm delighted that you are writing with broad strokes, forging ahead with the confidence that you can address details with a finer brush later. That's exactly how I paint. Happy creating, Mark!

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