It’s funny how just by using a scatalogical expletive Anne Lamott has come to own the concept of the shitty first draft, turning a universal law into something akin to a copyright. That’s a good jedi writer trick. Regardless of ownership, the idea is right: it is hard to get the first thing out, and we just have to get ourselves past the bad to get to the good. Jon Bell writing at Medium has this theory:
I use a trick with co-workers when we’re trying to decide where to eat for lunch and no one has any ideas. I recommend McDonald’s.
An interesting thing happens. Everyone unanimously agrees that we can’t possibly go to McDonald’s, and better lunch suggestions emerge. Magic!
I wouldn’t be part of any group (unless it’s populated with 7-year-olds) where such a ploy wouldn’t work, but when applied to creative projects, Bell extrapolates this to putting the worst idea you can think of down on paper or up on the whiteboard, and then watching as all the better ideas come flooding into supplant it. Shame, or fear of it, has motivating power. Or maybe it’s just the inborn drive to do well that some have kicking in. I’m not much on inspirational blog posts, but here’s the crescendo:
It takes a crazy kind of courage, of focus, of foolhardy perseverance to quiet all those ideas long enough to move forward. But it’s possible, you just have to start. Bust down that first barrier and just get things on the page. It’s not the kind of thing you can do in your head, you have to write something, sketch something, do something, and then revise off it.
I like to say that writing is pretty simple: you get something down, and if it sucks (it will) you fix it. Repeat that process until the whole thing no longer sucks. The hardest part of writing is knowing what sucks, of course. That takes reading.