I want to get my blog back on the level. In order to do that, I intend to write a few shorter pieces based on my research (and research that I’ll never actually finish). I also will be writing a few pieces about writing, research, and teaching. This one is about writing.
Over the last year or so, I’ve spent a fair bit of time reading about writing. I’ve read books by academics about how to write more than you already do. I’ve read books by nonfiction authors about how to approach writing like it’s a fucking job (because, if you’re a professor, it is). I’ve read books by fiction writers about finding “flow” or “the zone” or “focus” or whatever actual productivity feels like.
These books contain multitudes. Very repetitive multitudes. There comes a point in the research process where scholars indicate that they have achieved saturation. I’m not sure I’m there on the writing books, but I’m awfully close. Here is one of the most important lessons that I’ve encountered across each of these formats: drafts do different things.
In Bird by Bird, Ann Lamott urges her reader to write “shitty first drafts.” She writes about getting words on the page and then letting your brain go to work tinkering and fixing and making it less shitty. The purpose of the first draft is to be a big steaming pile of shit—but it has to be on the page.
This is freeing in a way, because it helps me deal with my inner critic who insists that that last line was derivative (and that repeating the word that is redundant and clunky). “It’s okay,” I tell my inner-asshole, “I’ll fix it later. Right now, I have to get to the next idea.” Once the ideas are on the page, they can be outlined, analyzed, and revised. Until that time, they’re just floating around in your head and not doing anyone any good (including you).
In addition to my reading about writing meta-crisis, I’ve also been reading a bunch of Neil Gaiman books[1]—and my InstaTwitFace knows it. It also knows that I’m an educator and fascinated by learning and self-actualization. Take these two bits of information, shake them up, ad a twist of social media big brother, and I keep seeing ads for Neil Gaiman’s Master Class video series (for the incredibly low price of $90 you too can be an award-winning author of incredibly deep, creative fiction, graphic novels, and, an episode of Dr. Who or two). Of course, since the algorithm thinks I should watch the ad, I have—and if I had $90 and time (which is significantly harder to come by), I’d probably watch the videos. In the ad, Gaiman talks about how the first draft is about figuring out what you’re writing and that the second draft is about acting like you knew it all along. This too can be quite freeing.
I harp on my students about writing “ah ha” arguments—the ones where they write 1000 words of meandering nonsense before arriving at something that resembles an argument and then, convinced of their genius, stop writing a sentence or so later, hit submit, wait a few minutes and then email me to inquire about why they have yet to be notified of their perfect score for the assignment. The solution to the “ah ha” problem is almost always to move the last paragraph to the beginning and rewrite everything that follows in order to defend rather than find the “ah ha.”
It sounds so easy, doesn’t it? It does—at least until you try to do it. Rewriting something word by word, sentence by sentence, idea by idea is hard. Really hard.
The first draft is your brain crapping on the page. The second one requires sifting through the crap to figure out what’s worth writing and why it’s worth writing.
[1]Big fan of The Ocean at the End of Lane. American Gods is as good as advertised, but was a little slow/drawn out. Anansi Boys, so far, has been quite fun. I'm looking forward to digging into Good Omens soon. Art Matters is a must read for a humanist/artist/critic-type.
