What To Do With Your Shitty First Drafts
Five steps to polishing them up
If you’ve been writing for a while you’ll no doubt have come across the idea of shitty first drafts, a concept associated with Anne Lamott, but known to us all.
Today, we’re all going to select a shitty first draft from our hard drive, cloud storage, or wherever we keep them, and here’s what we’re going to do.
Read it over.
Decide what we actually wanted to achieve with this piece. Are we writing to persuade, comfort, inspire or inform?
Cut out everything that’s not achieving that. If it’s great writing we have two choices. Rewrite so it is achieving that, or keep it for another piece of writing with a different aim.
Make all the writing that’s left shine. Improve each sentence. Consider stronger words, and more specific ones. Find better examples and anecdotes, and write them in fewer words. Aim for clarity. Make sure every sentence, paragraph and idea links elegantly to the next. Look for themes and important ideas and novel concepts. Tie them all together as prettily as we can.
Set it aside (again) then come back for a final polish. Cut out anything that doesn’t contribute to our main aim or argument. Delete every filler word. Consider if any word or sentence could be improved in any way. Publish or submit.
Personally I’m doing this with an article. You could be doing it with an essay, or a poem, or a full-length book. The process is the same, though it varies greatly in the amount of time required. Let me know how it goes.
Some thoughts from others I’ve been enjoying this week
Here's What's Possible When You Write on Medium and Get Boosted by
54 words guaranteed to make more people stop and take notice of your writing (must-read for non-fiction writers) by Alex Mathers
How the Lemon Tree Mindset Helped Me Finish (and Publish) My First Book By
&After 60 Days on Substack, I Think I've Found the Best Platform for Writers by
&
What else I’ve been up to this week
Reading: Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
Listening to: The Psychology of Money (on Audible)
Enjoying: Beach time
Not enjoying: The too-hot-to-sleep nights
This week’s Medium posts
(Friend links, as always, so you can read for free)
That’s all for this week. If you’re reading this online, feel free to subscribe to get future posts straight to your inbox.
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Someone said: from everything that I write 90% is waste, 8% can be used, 2% is gold.
I try to live by this rule.
Sometimes the gold might be hidden in waste.
Write until they become not so shitty.