your first draft should be a mess

(first drafts don't have to be scary / they just have to be messy)

*Note: hi! i’m lucy (author of the mommy issues cannibal novel). i wanna keep my substack as transparent and accessible as possible, but if you’d like to support my work, there’s a paid subscription option that will help me to keep pushing out articles and fully transparent thoughts on publishing and writing. there’s a couple of lil’ perks if you’re feeling generous <3

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Thank you for this question Iby!

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Preamble

Terry Pratchett on First Drafts:

I certainly don't sit down and plan a book out before I write.

In his Valley Full of Clouds approach, he likens writing a book to looking down at a misty valley, with only the treetops or scattered landmarks to help you navigate the deep wood and the mist.

Anne Lamott in her book Bird by Bird has a slightly different way of viewing it:

The first draft is the child's draft, where you let it all pour out […] knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. You just let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page.

A friend of mine (the lovely Charlotte Paradise - author of Overspill and acclaimed/award-winning screenwriter and novelist) recently gave me some advice as I was drafting a new project too:

Leave yourself some surprises.

A first draft is such a strange beast and there’s no right or wrong way to do it but I do identify with these ways of viewing that first version of the story. I think what all of them have in common is not the craft of writing itself but the craft of trusting one’s own intuition.

They also encourage you to make mistakes and embrace the imperfections of a piece of writing, which I think is a powerful way to write first drafts too.

How I write first drafts

As a literary writer, I’m all about vibes. I think this also stems from my filmmaking background as its images that come to me first. Moments. Intimate flashes of scenes I haven’t written yet.

I write those moments down in note books and I use those as my Terry Pratchett landmarks to follow through the valley, giving myself a rough skeleton (which I know will probably change later).

From there, I keep a note of all the scenes that I think of - usually in a notebook, but sometimes on receipt paper or on the back of my hand, and then I write my first drafts entirely by hand on coloured paper. It stops me from self editing and it reminds me that the craft itself or pulling a story together is physical.

I accept it is messy. I accept it’s half the length I want it to be. My only goal from this draft is to understand who my characters are, what I want my novel to feel like, what I want to say with it and how I want the reader to feel. The story and plot are things that are refined as you edit.

Great ideas come in the moment, so you can’t have so rigid a plan as to not make space for those magic moments.

I remind myself of this always: in order to find those messy, human moments, you also must be messy and human.