If you are in the middle of a first draft right now, this is for you. Not the version you are polishing for submission. The version you are fighting with. The one that is going badly, or going nowhere, or going somewhere unexpected that frightens you a little.
First drafts are not meant to be good. They are meant to exist. The only thing a first draft has to do is survive long enough to be revised. Everything that will make it a book comes later.
The draft that frightens you is usually the one worth finishing.
We have encountered this in manuscripts we have read, in conversations with writers we admire, and in our own experience of making things: the work that is most alive tends to be the work that gave its writer the most trouble. Not because difficulty is a virtue, but because difficulty usually means you are writing toward something real. You are not yet sure what it is, and that uncertainty is showing up on the page, and that is precisely right.
Three things worth remembering
First: your first draft is a private document. You do not have to show it to anyone until you are ready. Give yourself the freedom of that privacy. Write badly if you must. Write toward the thing, even if you cannot see it yet.
Second: the ending does not have to be written last. Some writers need to know where they are going before they can go there. Others need to find the ending by writing everything that comes before it. Neither is wrong. The only wrong move is stopping.
Third: revision is not failure. It is the work. Most of what you are writing now will change. That is not a problem with your first draft — it is the nature of making something. The first draft is raw material. What you build from it is the book.
We look forward to reading what you make. When it is ready, our submissions are open.
