Embrace the Rough Draft

Embrace the Rough Draft

I write very fast. I can get a chapter written in an hour if I know the characters and know the story. So, in my two hours I have slotted every morning, I should be able to write two chapters – and that means a 30-chapter book could conceivably be written in rough draft form in 3 weeks.

I’ve done it many times. But, the key word there is rough draft.

Miriam Webster defines rough as:

: crude, unfinished
: executed or ventured hastily, tentatively, or imperfectly

draft is defined as:

a preliminary sketch, outline, or version

A rough draft is not intended to be a thing of beauty or perfection. It should not contain a lot of descriptions or perfect sentences. It likely has a lot of telling and not showing — a lot of passive sentences and words that end in conjunctions.

That’s okay!

I learned when I try to write with perfection, my entire creative process is completely hindered. I’m too busy worrying about how to properly order a paragraph and not use a word too often than I am thinking about the story.

When I give myself permission to write it rough, then my creativity has nothing holding it back. I can just close my eyes and envision my scene and let it go.

The real magic happens in the editorial process. THAT is the hard part – that is the work. It will take me four passes through my entire book to fully edit it in order to hand it off to my editors. And, that’s okay. Because the story is down and now I know where to fill gaps and what is needed for each scene.

You have permission to write a crude, hastily written preliminary outline of your book. In fact, I encourage it!