I just finished my sixth draft of a book I’ve been working on. That’s a lot for me, especially considering that the sixth draft was a re-write, an exhausting endeavour.
I’m not bragging, frankly it’s not that impressive. Some of the greatest writers in history wrote dozens of drafts. Then there’s the tweaking which many could spend their lives doing. Touching up a phrase here, conjugating a verb there. Add an adjective, delete an adverb—because they’re evil—move a word to the end of a sentence, then to the middle, then back, then delete it altogether. If you aren’t working on a deadline, and you understand that writing is organic, something that won’t be set in stone—until someone else sets it in press—you can play with words forever. But this is just polish—there are only two stages that matter in the life of a piece of writing, and the rest’s just icing.
You need to write like Neil Young records albums—quickly, viscerally, and frequently. Yes, those are all adverbs. Have I mentioned I’m a hypocrite, too?
Young’s mantra is: “If you think, you stink.” Some of the studio musicians he’s worked with have been shocked to learn that what they thought was a rehearsal is the take Young puts on the album. Young believes that there’s this groove, a pure form of music that can only be attained when it’s done by feel. Jamming away at a song is when he says it’s the most honest. He might take it and lay some overdubs on it—yuh-huh, he edits it—but the core of the song remains that first idea.
Step one is to write the damn thing. You can have a million good ideas but until you’ve got one on paper, written all the way to its conclusion, you’re no more a writer than the people who annoy Margaret Atwood at parties.
Writers write. They don’t say they do it, they do it.
Your idea might not be what you thought it was going to be when you start writing, and that might be when you first feel the urge to quit.
“It’s not such a good idea after all.”
WRONG! Ignore that urge, urges are stupid, you’re no monkey. Of course your idea isn’t the same once you’ve started writing it—you’ve taken the mess of images and concepts from the ether in your noggin and you’ve tried to express them in little black characters on the product of pulped tree. It’s not a logical process.
Don’t think about that, keep going. If you get the damn thing done then you’ve passed the first test. You’re a writer now because you’ve got something writ.
Whenever I get an idea, the first thing I decide is how to end it. You get yourself an ending, you’ve got something to write to, junior. You can drop in little bits of foreshadowing here and there, you know characters’ motivations—to dust of a cliché: it writes itself.
Think of it as going for a drive. You can get in your car with no place in mind—might be kind of fun. But after you drive around, stop at the 7-11, pick up a paper, you eventually run out of ideas, give up and go home. If you’re driving with a destination, you always have that in mind. It’s a journey now. Oh sure, you might go on side-trips, but that just adds to the tale.
Step two is my favourite. This is where the piece goes from writing to a “work.” I refer to it as the Mike Teavee Stage.
You remember Mike Teavee, either from the Roald Dahl novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or from the Gene Wilder film where Charlie is substituted for Willie Wonka in the title. God help you if your reference point is that Burton/Depp crap stew.
Anyway, what happens to good ol’ Mike? Well, he wants to be the first boy on television, actually living therem so he uses Willie’s machine to zap himself through the air in a million little pieces, appearing in 3D version on the set on the other side of the room. Unfortunately, he’s stuck that way forever.
Okay, it’s a tragic story meant to lecture you on watching too much boob tube, but from our perspective it’s crucial in understanding what that first real edit does to a draft. This edit can only be done to a concluded draft—the term “finished draft” is given by a publisher, not a writer. You take that junk you’ve poured out like Crazy Horse on cocaine and then you edit the hell outta it, ending up with a tight, succinct piece of work, 1/8 the original size. Or so.
“Murder your darlings.”
Any work you do after this point can be fabulous, but it’s all just polish. These two stages are writing, and the Mike Teavee stage is as—I’d argue more—important as the initial composition.
Draft, edit, re-write, re-draft, re-do to your heart's content . . . but it’s those first two steps that bring a story to life.
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