Friday, November 2, 2012

The Most Interesting Thing: First Draft Garbage


"It is perfectly okay to write garbage--as long as you edit brilliantly." - C. J. Cherryh
For all of you partaking of the insanity known as NaNoWriMo, I salute you. No one says you have to write 60,000 fabulous words, right? But you will have to edit those words some day and I wish you much success in making them as brilliant as our Colorado sunrises. 

Revising. That's what I'm working on this month. Revising a much-loved first draft that I haven't touched in six months. I spent three days working out the problems on the first page. Garbage? Yep. Most of the first chapter ended up in that pretty little silver icon on my laptop's dock. My goal is to revise this 45K novel by the end of the month. I tend to draft sparsly, so I'll most likely be adding scenes and many new words as I shuffle through this story. 

Whatever it is you're working on this month, I wish you success. 

Are your first drafts garbage?

19 comments:

  1. I'm plugging away on my first draft of my first novel. As of this morning I've got 93,000 words of my target 100,000 and if things keep going at this rate, I might actually exceed that goal.
    The only thing that's gotten me this far is embracing that some of it is going to be garbage, some of it is going to be kept and I have the freedom to rewrite as much as I need to when I'm in the next phase!
    Happy editing!

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    1. Thanks. And best wishes with that first novel!

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  2. Yes. Yes they are. But sometimes, some little nuggets will shine through. Good luck with revisions. I need to focus on mine next year.

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    1. Love those nuggets! Great to see you. Thanks for stopping by.

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  3. A first draft takes me forever because I'm trying so hard not to let it be garbage. I'm not very good at cleaning up. So no NaNo for me.

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    1. No NaNo for me either. But I still find lots of garbage in these first drafts. ^_^

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  4. Oh, yes they are! But I struggle with editing as I go. I can write a chapter of crap, then I'll stall on a scene and work it like crazy - editing, deleting - until I catch myself. It takes discipline to put the crap down first, then go back and fine-tune.

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    1. Great to see you, Dawn! We just don't like writing crap, do we?

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  5. Always! Though some are less garbage-y than others. Still, the important part of that first draft is getting that story out there so you can work with it.

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  6. My problem is that my first drafts are garbage but I don't recognize them as such. Makes the revising tough going as who needs to revise that which is already soooooo good? (Wait. What? You're telling me that it's NOT good?)

    Le sigh.

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    1. One man's garbage is another man's treasure, eh? ^_^

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  7. My first drafts are barely intelligible: fragmented, sketchy, full of loose ends and notes on what to fix later.

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  8. My first drafts are always garbage -- but my motto is that it's easier to edit something on the page than those ethereal thoughts hanging in the air. Regarding my November goal -- I'm shaking it up with some nonfiction this year.

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    1. Excellent point! Have fun with that nonfiction. ^_^

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  9. My first drafts are definitely garbage, though while I'm writing them I usually think they're good--a phase that ends once I'm done with the project and can look back at it.

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    1. Have you ever scratched your head and said, "Who wrote this junk?"

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  10. Are they garbage? Heck, sometimes they're land fills, spilling over with rank trash.

    Good luck with the edits. :)

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