NaNoWriMo and Shitty First Drafts

It's November again, which means that it is National Novel Writers Month, affectionately known as NaNoWriMo.  The idea is to get people into writing, whatever the story is or whatever words need to come out, getting that initial push of words so that you have material to work with and really shape into something better.  It's a tough thing to do, write while caging your inner editor or feelings of inadequacy ("this is crap; what the hell am I doing this for?") and to continue to write anyway, all in pursuit of writing 50,000 words in the month of November.  It's a tough goal, but I've managed to complete it two or three times.  Sadly, I don't feel that I have the time this month to do attempt it this year (particularly while working full time and taking an online course), but I still carry some elements with me that were important perspectives to writing and creating art in general that it taught me.

Here's what I've learned in the process:

• Delete nothing--if anything, rewrite the scene later but leave both in.  The "wrong" version can be excised later.
• Even the best laid outlines will find surprises as you start to sit down and write.  I've had so many places that I wanted to get to, but I realized a substantial plot hole or an element that just didn't make sense which needed explaining as I was writing.  Write yourself through it, thinking through elements as you transcribe them.  The cleanup can happen later.  Similarly, don't be afraid to let the story take control.
• For myself, I work best with a loose outline--anything too detailed is going to frustrate me or otherwise restrict where elements could go.  This also happens to be how I prefer to plan vacations.
• Sometimes you have to kill your babies.  What I mean by this is a particular idea or character that you're really attached to may not be the best fit for the story.  If the story is negatively impacted, this can mean that this isn't the right arena for that character or idea.  Write it down to save it for later.
• It gets a little easier to cage that little voice in the back of your head when you have objective goals.  Hell, turn it into an opportunity to have your main character talk back to you, either as a peptalk or to voice those concerns that you have.
• Everything is research.  This means that weird conversations and some even weirder search history is going to happen.  And it's fun to explore these elements and look at our world a different way, truly.  Embrace it.
• Being in the practice of writing/creating art is important, even if you're not showing it anywhere currently.

Everything starts with a shitty first draft.  I have drafts of pieces that absolutely disgust me and will never see the light of day.  But I had to make those to find what I really wanted to say in something cleaner or work through a problem that I was struggling to articulate or otherwise find the source of the real issue.  I have had long, complex sentences that rehash the same thing from the previous sentence.  I have used more semicolons in one paragraph than anyone should, winky faces aside.  I've fallen into hackneyed phrases that break the mood.  I've organized things in such a way that the elements were incomprehensible.  

But I made a draft.  The pieces were there.  They could be reorganized.  They could be prettied up.  They could be altered to better fit.  I could find the gem of what I really wanted to convey and rework all other pieces around it, perhaps transplating it into different materials.  I couldn't do any of that if I never set words down to paper.  

The idea that's been floating in your head, the problem is not that you're inadequate in expressing it:  the problem is that you have good taste, and it's hard to see it rendered only partially.  It takes patience and grace to fully realize what you envisioned.  And sometimes, when it's on a page you may realize that some elements that didn't translate as well from your mind could be better served differently, that keeping the integrity of the idea is more important than this specific detail or that specific detail.  But you've got to start somewhere.  Sometimes, you don't realize how to best transcribe that idea until you show a friend that basic level, talking through the idea with them for some additional perspective.  

But you've got to make the shitty first draft first, and allow yourself the grace to make a shitty first draft.  Embrace the shitty first draft.  The draft is shitty, but you are not.  A shitty first draft is not reflective of anyone's ability to draw, write, paint, sculpt, or whatever else.  Practice will only improve what you can do, will only help your range of expression grow as you try new things and give yourself room to fail.  It's fully possible that you may clean it up and it's still crap--you still made art today, and you will be better practiced to make something better in the future.

Andy tried a process in this in the beginning of this year, on his YouTube channel with the 100 Day Music challenge (here's the starting video), which included voice lessons, accordion lessons, and one killer cover of "Hallowed Be Thy Name."  Through the process, he expressed some of the same lessons that I had learned, that being in the practice of making art was good for his heart in many ways and that the hardest part for him was getting over the hump of accepting that it wasn't always going to be perfect and that it didn't have to be to have merit or to be worth sharing.  Andy had to experience it himself to understand it, just as I did.  

Go make some bad art.