The Writing Begins and Crap Comes Out

“Boon Shifted his weight from foot to foot trying not to stare at the old troll slumped in the large wooden chair.”

This was the first sentence I typed on my way to the first draft of my troll short story–nothing special, but a start.

“Do you really think you can write a good story?” The doubt demons asked.   “Everything you are typing here is crap, crap, crap, crap crap.”

“Leave me alone,” I said.

They laughed and danced around.  “Crap, crap, crap, crap, crapppity crap, crap crap.”

I had to give it to the demons–  a lot of what I was writing did stink.  There had to be more productive things I could be doing.  Netfix has a lot of movies and I could always find the latest cat video somewhere one Facebook.

But a draft isn’t intended to be quality.  The goal is to get the words down beginning to end.  I knew that, but I wanted to start editing and throw out the stupid sentences the doubt demons chuckled over, but I didn’t.  I kept going and accepted that the draft would be bad.  I had to prove to myself that I could do this– or prove once and for all I couldn’t.

So I typed and kept typing.  I made goals– just get 200 words down today.  At one point I filled half a page with the word “crap” typed over and over again.  That was the only section I modified before finishing the draft by adding the question “So what?” to the series of crap.  That put me over 300 words for that day.

At times, I left sections of the page blank with a note to “put something here” or “have him talk to the old troll.”  I jumped around, zigged and zagged, with one goal– finish the damn thing.

I have heard that finishing the draft is always the most important step.  While editing, which I’ll talk about later, takes up more time and effort, finishing the initial draft is the mental Mount Everest of the effort.  It is giving birth to the ugly duck that you hope will turn into a swan.  But without that duck, you don’t have anything other than the company of the doubt demons celebrating their victory.

I finished my duck early November of 2013, deleted section of “crap” I had earlier typed then put it away for a for a while before stated the edits.  This first draft took me longer to complete than many others I‘ve done.  It wasn’t any better than any of my other first drafts; it was worse.  But it didn’t bother me.  I finished it and I didn’t stop myself along the way.  And in looking back, I now know that if I did it once, I can do it again.