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I spent the day being driven crazy by ProWriting Aid’s AI. I used it to do a final cleanup of a submission to an anthology. The POV is from a dog’s perspective. That was challenging in itself because I kept having to find simpler wording.  A dog is not going to use the word adjacent.

But every time I did, PWA informed me that I needed to expand my vocabulary, or that there was a better word I could use. And it hated one made up word I used. The story was in first person, and present tense. I was surprised that present tense was easy to write.  This was a story for two of my strengths, Adaptability and Ideation.

Onto the topic.

With National Novel Writing Month coming up, “Give yourself permission to write crap” is going to be the mantra of many writers.

I also think it’s advice that should generally be ignored. (I even disagreed with Dean Wesley Smith on it!)

Though I understand the principle behind it.

The advice appears to have started with Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird. I’ve never read the Book before and am only now getting to it. I’m afraid I had an aversion to when everyone recommends a book (same problem with Stephen King’s book. I have read that and don’t understand why it’s in everyone’s top five.)

I’m finding it an interesting read, though nothing eye opening. It’s a deeply personal book. She started writing as a child, got published in her 20s, and eventually turned to teaching writing. 

She has an entire chapter on writing “shitty” drafts. The chapter in question has likely led to all the following:

• Write straight through without stopping until you reach the end of the book (an attempt to outrun the inner critic/critical voice)
• Give yourself permission to write crap/shitty/suck
• All first drafts are shit
• The first draft is something distasteful to get out of the way.

A lot of this interpretation is because the people don’t understand exactly what she’s talking about, or they understand only pieces of it. Some of this may come from the wrong motivations to write. Like writing for validation, or getting published to solve all your problems.

And still other writers are merely repeating what they’ve heard from other writers. Ross Dawson talks about determining the provenance of information. Like a painting, it starts with who originated the information and reading the original source. Any time someone repeats it, they’ll add their own interpretation and opinion. Other people take that interpretation and add still more opinion and soon you have a copy of a copy of a copy…

Anne Lamott talks about “shitty drafts” in the context of the inner critic/critical Voice. That’s the voice that says, “Why did you write that sentence? It’s terrible. Go fix it.” It leads writers to revise a sentence multiple times before moving on, trying to “perfect” it.

My former cowriter got stuck in a place of fear—fear of finishing—so he wanted to endlessly revise the opening chapter. Yet another writer I knew would write three chapters of a book, then ask for critiques, and use the comments as a reason to toss them out and start a new book. He never finished anything.

To some extent, you can’t outrun the critical voice. “Write straight through to the end without stopping” only gets you so far, especially with the critical voice is not really dealt with.

Instead, critical voice takes another route…and you can see it every meme or comments about first drafts from writer. Critical voice latches onto the incredibly negative “shitty,” “crap,” and “garbage.”

Instead of, “Don’t write perfect,” critical voice gets a foot—and maybe half the body—into the door. Because it loves the phrase “all first drafts are shit.”

It’ll happily encourage you to “write a shitty first draft” under the pretense of getting the writing done. Most writers interpret this as writing sloppily because “everything can be fixed on the revision.”  And critical voice encourages that, too.

Because, as M.L. Ronn notes in his Pocket Guide to Pantsing (I believe it’s this book, but it may be one of his others), when you get to the revision, you’re horrified at the problems you have.  And it reinforces both “first drafts are shitty” and feeds the critical voice. It promptly says, “See? I told you so.”

The minute you buy into “write a shitty first draft” or “all first drafts are shit,” you are handing the keys to the critical voice.

How do you get past the critical voice? It takes a lot of work, and more than one book; in fact, many more. But you start by jettisoning the negative words and thinking about what you say to yourself. Would you say “This is shitty” to your three year old self?

thinking about what you say to yourself. Would you say “This is shitty” to your three year old self?

Yeah, I thought not. It has to start somewhere.

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My book is in this year’s 2023 Novel Writing Tools Bundle. Please check it out!