Avi

word craft

blog

Taking time

timeLast Octo­ber I had an idea for a new book. I did what I usu­al­ly do: I began to read about the sub­ject, try­ing to grab hold of the idea in a more con­crete fash­ion. After a cou­ple of months of ran­dom, not very focused thought, I took my usu­al next step. I tried writ­ing a cou­ple of chap­ters, feel­ing my way. That was in Decem­ber. At the time, I thought those chap­ters were okay, but the press of oth­er work, with dead­lines, turned me elsewhere. 

Today, I remem­bered those open­ing chap­ters, and, want­i­ng to take a break from my cur­rent project. I took a look at those Decem­ber chapters. 

They were pret­ty bad. Yet … I could see where they might pro­vide the basis for more work. 

Speak­ing for myself, my first drafts—absolutely first drafts—are usu­al­ly awful. The point is, how­ev­er, the idea has promise. Indeed, quite often, an idea is far bet­ter than the ini­tial exe­cu­tion of that idea. The trick—if that is the word—is not to be dis­cour­aged by those first efforts. Accept that first drafts are first drafts. One must take the long view. Give me a year or so—and eighty drafts—then we will see if I have made any­thing of what I have done. 

When you write, time is not just a good friend; time is your essen­tial friend.

2 thoughts on “Taking time”

  1. I loved this blog. Right now I’m work­ing on a book series but I know my draft is absolute­ly awful. However,everyone who I explain the sto­ry to falls in love with it so I know I have a gem plot, but it will take a lot of edit­ing until it is ready for pub­lish­ing. I just hope I can speed up the process once I fin­ish engi­neer­ing school because I have 26 books out­lined and I’ve been work­ing on the first draft of the first book for two and a half years now!

    Reply
  2. I agree! It’s easy to get dis­cour­aged with a ter­ri­ble first draft, but I find that the more I rewrite the draft, the clos­er it gets to the idea in my head–and then it becomes even bet­ter than the idea as it becomes a real sto­ry on paper.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.