Jill Murray

Sometime La S worries that she, I dunno, comes across like she’s worked herself into a frothy rage over a manuscript I’ve saddled her with. I’ll get the occasional one back completely gummy with post-its that just say “NO!” and whole pages X-ed out in dried blood, with only repeated exclamation points for explanation. “Um, just ignore that one. I changed my mind,” she’ll tell me over an apologetic brunch.

This next book I’m working on, the one after Break On Through, (about which, by the way, I’ll have some news for you soon) is so far not going like one of those. I got past the hard part where every idea I had was terrible, and I was going to have to go back to school and retrain as a data-entry clerk so at least my typing skills would not lie in waste, and I now have a solid outline, expanded outlline, and 50 clean pages of actual chaptered prose, none of which have thus far yielded fury.

What La S doesn’t know, becuase she never sees the notes I write myself, is that the reason I’m never really too worried about any of her comments, and in fact often seem to enjoy the torture (otherwise, why would I keep going back for more?), is that my notes are worse.

Here are a few samples I’ll share with you, to make it clear just what a first draft feels like– to me anyway.

[WHAT is going to HAPPEN here? Too much talking. Not enough POINT.]

[Cut this back, because you’re supposed to leave OUT the boring parts.]

[Her FIRST language is English, correct?]

Different writers have different approaches, but I don’t think first drafts are ever pretty. The advice I’d give to anyone setting out on a first draft is:

1. Cut yourself some slack if you can do so without giving up and just watching TV instead of working. It’s going to be a mess. Guaranteed.
2. Get a little evil with yourself now, if you can be evil responsibly and non-self-destructively. It will help you to not take yourself or anyone else too seriously later, when you’re getting comments back, and going into the second draft– a time which may make you want to either die or kill people– but only at first, until you realize how many of those comments are bang-on.

So essentially, try develop a kind of zen multiple personality disorder and your first draft will pull through just fine. Bad now = Good later.