Getting a draft written

This issue of Word Works is an update of an item we published in our September 1987 issue. Many writers have trouble getting through a complete draft. It doesn’t matter how much they’ve planned the paper out in advance; there’s something about having to put everything into words, sentences, and paragraphs that’s daunting. Perhaps they fear their ideas will get messed up when they try to write them down. Or they may feel that the words, once written down, will be too hard to change But there are things writers can do to get past that block. Listen to three prominent writers commenting on how to get a draft written.

William Stafford: “Lower your standards.”
Stafford’s advice sounds counter-intuitive. Shouldn’t we be aiming high when we write, trying to do the best we can? Well, maybe not. The high standards can help us when we revise, but when we’re trying to crank out a draft they can get in the way. Let’s consider why that is. When we write, we have two voices inside us: the voice of the writer and the voice of the critic. If the critic is trying to criticize while the writer is trying to write, we can be stymied. We write a sentence, decide it’s no good, and delete it. After an hour of this, we’re lucky if we have one paragraph written. To prevent that from happening, we have to hold back the editor in us while the writer is trying to produce text. When the editor says, “This is terrible!” the writer has to respond, “Well of course it’s terrible. But at least the writing is getting done. Don’t bother me until I’m ready for you.”

Donald Murray: “You have to write badly to write well”
This is another odd-sounding piece of advice, deliberately paradoxical. What Murray means is that writers should practice not being perfectionists when writing the first draft. They should train themselves to go ahead and let that first draft be bad. Let it be disorganized, let it be awkwardly written. Let it be a piece of stream-of-consciousness writing, if necessary, just to keep the writing going and get it all down. Let it be full of holes. When the draft is done, the writer can say, “Well, it’s a disorganized mess. But at least the ideas are mostly there, and now I can begin to work with it.”

E.M. Forster: “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?”
Forster’s rhetorical question, which has become a sort of maxim among writing teachers, has been maligned by some critics. They see it as an excuse for putting any kind of bubble-headedness down on paper and passing it off as writing. But it can be understood in another way. It can mean – as Forster most likely meant it to mean – that writing itself is an act of thinking. There’s something about the very act of scribbling words down on a notepad, or tapping them into a computer, that draws ideas out and causes writers to make connections and flash on insights they never thought of before. It’s not sloppy thinking; it’s creative thinking.

Eight strategies for getting a draft written
So what are some practical ways of following these writers’ advice? Here are eight strategies for getting a draft started, keeping it going, and rescuing it if it bogs down.

1. Start with the part that’s easiest to write. Just because you want your readers to read something in a certain order, you don’t have to write it in that order. If one part won’t go, start somewhere else. When you come back later to the section that gave you trouble, you’ll probably find it easier to write.

2. Write as much as you can in one sitting. When you come back to the draft, you’ll have that much already done. You’ll feel encouraged to push on. However, it’s also important to . . .

3. Stop when you get tired. Don’t try to push on when your body and brain start to resist your efforts. Some experts recommend stopping in the middle of a sentence, so that when you return to the draft you’ll have something to say right away. You won’t have to strain to start up a new topic. Taking breaks means, of course, that you have started writing well before the deadline, so you can have the extra time.

4. Freewrite. This strategy has been around for a long time, but it’s still one of the best. It’s sort of a game. You set a limit, say seven minutes, during which you will write steadily without removing pencil from paper. In seven minutes you can easily fill a page or more. Freewriting is useful when you aren’t sure what you’re going to say about a topic and want to explore the possibilities. As a bonus, you may produce sentences – even whole paragraphs – that you can use as is, without a lot of rewriting.

5. Loop. When a draft bogs down, falls apart, or starts to go off in the wrong direction, stop and loop back on what you’ve already written. Go back and pick up on an earlier sentence. It could be the last sentence you wrote, or a sentence that’s particularly interesting, or the last good sentence before things started to go wrong. Copy that sentence at the head of a new paragraph, make it your topic sentence, and develop it in to a paragraph.

6. Summarize. Summarizing is another trick you can try when you get stuck. Stop and jot down a summary of what you think you want to say. Write “What I want to say is. . .” and finish the sentence. Writing to yourself about the writing will often get the draft going again.

7. Paraphrase. Paraphrase is somewhat like summary and will often follow it. If the right words won’t come, go ahead and use the wrong words. Any old words. The very act of writing will help you find your way to the right words. A memorable quote from a high school teacher dramatizes the power of paraphrasing: When I sit down to write, I say to myself, “Nancy Wilson, you are about to write a simple paraphrase of the great essay you could write if you were smarter and had more time.” Then I forge ahead. I’m seldom smarter, and I never seem to have more time, so I just write paraphrases. And you know, some of them ain’t bad. We don’t take Wilson to mean that she’s content with second-rate versions of what she’d really like to write. Rather, we think she means that, by lowering her standards, she gets writing done that she wouldn’t otherwise get done. And the results are probably better than if she tried for perfection in her first drafts.

8. Try “blind” writing. This may sound crazy, but bear with us: Turn off your computer monitor, or cover it up, so you can’t see what you’re writing. Then start writing. You might think this would freeze you up. But just the opposite can happen: you can find yourself liberated. You can’t stop and worry about how to word an idea; you have to keep going while you still remember what you were going to say. Blind writing forces you to come up with ideas on the spot. You can’t stop and worry about whether they’re any good or not. It is best for working through a tough spot where you’re having trouble finding the words to express your meaning.

Why is blind writing so freeing? Because it forces you to put away the editor inside you and lets the writer write unhindered. Sure, it probably means that you’ll have to spend extra time cleaning up all the typos. But you may well end up with some writing that’s surprisingly well-developed and sharply focused.

No set of strategies will work for all writers. Writers have to be willing to try different strategies and tricks to see what works for them. As with all other aspects of writing, the strategies may require practice before they begin to pay back the effort put into them.

RL