800 days. Boom. I’d *totally* forgot that this milestone was today, and it couldn’t be more appropriate.
There’s this advice out there that you “shouldn’t fall in love with your first draft.” I’ve heard it before from several sources, and while I understand where they’re trying to go with it, I can honestly say “fuck that advice.”
See, what they’re getting at is that “writing is rewriting.” Don’t finish a first draft and never touch it again. Rewriting is *crucial* to the writing process. But to say “don’t love your first draft” is COMPLETELY MISSING THE POINT. Love that shit. Laugh with it. Cry with it. See it as the perfect shining eagle you want it to become, soaring over treetops like goddamn America. Fucking hold it so near and dear to your heart that you want to read it over and over again…because that’s exactly what you’re going to need to do in order to actually make it become everything you want it to be.
Seriously. If I didn’t love my work and think that just maybe it might turn out to be the best thing I’ve ever done ever, I’d never find the energy, inspiration or persistence to go back to that first draft with all its shortcomings and figure out a way to fix them. For me, I *have* to love my own writing. I write for me when I’m sitting at that keyboard. I’m the only one there. I have to entertain ME. So…love it. Love it with all my heart.
Some days I need to be reminded of that, and today was one of those days.
I sat down and FINALLY read through my short story and took my re-write notes and it reminded me of how important it is to me to love what I’m working on. Hating my work is really just negative thinking. The only thing it will ever give me is a reason to NOT WRITE. When I am writing, there are only solutions and ideas, and that’s the place where work gets done. That’s the place where I’d like to live as much as possible.
I fought doing this rewrite system that I learned about from another author, Susan Dennard…it’s quite a bit of work…but you know what I actually felt today finally DOING the system? It’s so much less work, because the amount of work that I stress over as a manuscript just sits there untouched is infinite. That exclusively-work-in-my-head is bottomless…the real, in-the-physical-world-work is not, and the system I started tonight really showed me that.
It’s ingenious in that it breaks apart story-telling into several distinct steps and breaks my novel/short story into tiny little bits that can each then be re-worked, improved, steadily made amazing…and then bob’s your uncle, a first draft becomes a much MUCH better second draft. It feels right to me, because it’s the same principle as the “3-pages-a-day” approach that I found for writing my first draft. It’s structured, and directly attacks the challenge of breaking a big project down into small, much less scary and stressful steps.
Anywho…I didn’t get to do that writing work until the very end of my day, but I am so glad I had the energy and inspiration to do so. I can feel good things happening inside me…I really do like to write, and I really do feel so good when I do it. I feel like myself.
Earlier in the day, I got to hang out with Josh, and we went over his feature, which is also essentially in the First Draft stage of the editing process. It looks beautiful. Seriously. Josh doesn’t even read this blog, I don’t think, and I’m saying that. It looks incredible. Very excited for him.
I also had to deal with a near-flood after a downpour of rain today right outside our front door. There had been so much rain, the drain system couldn’t handle it. It wasn’t a blockage, since the water went down fairly quickly after is stopped, but that’s almost worse: that means the system was working PROPERLY and it almost flooded our apartment. But, I had some workers over and we figured out where the pipe system was down in the garage, and opened up another spot for water to come out from if necessary.
Anywho…what a day 800. A milestone, both of this blog/journal, and with my writing of this short story. I’m excited about finishing my rewrites.