Embracing the rough draft

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Just start. Get all your thoughts down. You can edit later.

That’s what I say to myself throughout a first draft. I need to talk to myself like that; rough drafts are too difficult for me if I don’t.

I have always struggled with them, even back in middle school.

Whenever I had to write a paper or essay, I revised my first sentence again and again until I had one that felt right. Then I obsessed over the second, and if I could not get it to play well with sentence 1, I backed up and started over.

Once those first two sentences seemed to flow, I started sentence three. If I could make it work with the rest of what I had, I moved on. If not, I backed up — again.

That’s how I did it, sentence by sentence. By the time I typed the period at the end of the final paragraph, my paper was finished in my mind.

Sound tedious? It is.

Still, I enjoyed that process. I loved feeling the words fuse into thought, no matter how long it took.

But my process had flaw. I rarely went back and edited. After spending that much time on a paper, I didn’t want to rethink it and revise it. And, to be honest, my ego didn’t think it needed it. I foolishly thought what I had written could not be improved.

Also, after spending six hours getting 300 words on paper, I did not feel like writing, not that day or the next, not even for fun. Before I knew it, months passed and I hadn’t written anything that wasn’t assigned to me.

Over the years, I have learned that even after I obsess over a first draft, I can make my work better. Perhaps an idea needs more explanation, or my point isn’t clear. Or maybe another word or phrase would express a thought better.

I’ve come to realize the rough draft has value. My previous process never made my writing perfect; it just made a decent first draft. So, if I have to go back through my writing several times anyway, what does all that obsessing really save me?

But breaking bad habits is hard. I still try to polish each sentence and thought as I go. I must remind myself to keep going, get that rough draft. Create something I can edit.

As a writer, I am a work in progress.