Instagram Creative Writing Class: The Crap First Draft
8 May 2020
It took several years to write my first novel, The Missing One. At least nine months of that was spent finessing the opening three chapters. I obsessed over every sentence, word and description. When I sent the book to Judith Murray, who is now my agent, she said: ‘I like it, it needs a bit of work. I have notes’.
Her main note? ‘Lose the first three chapters, you don’t need them.’
This was my first lesson in ‘kill your darlings’. I slashed the first three chapters – and the book came alive.
What I’d been doing there was working out who my characters were, their backstories, where they lived, how they spoke. I didn’t realize that those chapters really belonged in the crap first draft (CFD).
Writing them brought the characters and set up alive for me, but the reader didn’t need to be led gently into the story. The reader needed the story to reach out, grab them by the throat and yank them in.
Writing, for me, is a process of (often brutal) editing. It took me more than three years to write Magpie Lane, but most of that was spent cutting, rethinking and reshaping, rewriting. I can only really do this when I have the CFD. This first clumsy, intense, wild attempt will be something like 70-80,000 words. And it really will be crap.
TIPS:
1. Adopt an attitude of experimentation and recklessness – YOU DON’T NEED TO START AT THE BEGINNING. Try writing random scenes.
2. Ignore the voice that’s hissing ‘this isn’t a novel’ (it’s right: it isn’t. Yet). 70,000 words may sound like a lot, but if you aren’t crouched on your own shoulder criticizing every sentence you type, it can be surprisingly doable.
3. Forget about elegant prose or your plot hanging together. Ignore clichés, allow hackneyed crap.
4. Try to stop on a high each day or at least not on a total low – stop before you run out of juice completely.
5. Vow never to show it to anyone.
Your CFD will contain moments that quicken your heart, characters that feel alive. These are the bits you’ll develop.
5 ways to get the CFD DONE:
1. Try a daily word count target – I don’t do this, many writes I know do
2. Devote actual time to it: Anthony Trollope wrote 47 novels, mostly whilst holding down a job. He swore by 3 hours a day and called writers ‘literary labourers’.
3. Find your best time of day. Create optimal writing conditions. For me it’s early mornings, with coffee.
4. Switch off the Internet and all social media during your writing time.
5. Spend time – when it’s not your optimal writing time – researching and reading. This gives you inspiration and energy, the fuel you need, for the next day’s work.
The CFD gets you over the massive psychological hurdle of the blank page. For me its the path from buttoned up, hypercritical, conscious mind into the fertile subconscious where the story is hiding.
