“Sometimes in a nervous frenzy I just fling words as if I were flinging mud at a wall. “I would advise any beginning writer to write the first drafts as if no one else will ever read them-without a thought about publication -and only in the last draft to consider how the work will look from the outside.” - Anne Tyler It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good.” - William Faulkner “The first draft of anything is shit.” - Ernest Hemingway And with each draft, your writing will get stronger and better.It doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner or a professional, writes Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird, when you first sit down to write something new, “We all often feel like we are pulling teeth.” If you’re struggling with a first draft of your novel or screenplay, you might find encouragement in these quotes from famous writers: After you complete this, you can do all the tweaking, revising, enhancing, adding, and rewriting you want to do as you enter the editing stage.

You don’t have to make your first draft the most amazing piece of writing you’ve ever done, but you’ll be amazed to see your ideas on paper. It’s a necessary step, and it will help you get where you want to go. Think of your first draft like you think of your outline: It’s just another tool in the process to help guide you. If you take the pressure off of yourself that it should be perfect from the get-go, you will be able to focus on what’s important: finishing your first draft. Your thoughts may sound jumbled and not turn out how you originally pictured them, but for the first draft, it doesn’t matter. You can’t perfect something that does not exist, so create it. The main goal of your first draft is to create something. Writing is a recursive process, and many pieces of the puzzle can be added after your first draft is complete. You can also leave placeholders for case studies, examples, and images. And if you have entire sections missing, you can add these later too. You can add transitions, introductions, and conclusions as you go back through and polish your content. It’s perfectly fine to have missing pieces in your first draft. You can add missing content laterĪs you work on the first draft of your manuscript, you may find that you get to a paragraph, section, or whole chapter that you are not feeling particularly inspired to write about. If you spend your time trying to make each sentence, section, and chapter perfect, you could find yourself stuck on the same chapter for months. These are all things that can be fixed later. There will be typos, misspelled words, misuse of grammar and punctuation, and run-on sentences. We repeat: Your first draft does not have to be perfect. Your first draft does not have to be perfect. When beginning your first draft, keep these three things in mind: You will have plenty of opportunities to tweak and adjust later. Our advice is to not get hung up on the details when writing your first draft. You might find yourself writing and rewriting your first chapter or even your first few paragraphs over and over again. You know what you planned to talk about, and you want your articulation, punctuation, rhythm, and descriptions to be perfect. After you have brainstormed ideas for your subject matter and then completed your detailed outline, it’s time to begin your prose. Any author will tell you: Writing is a long and arduous process.

Book rough draft example