All first drafts stink, honest

Yesterday I finished reading my first draft.

First drafts are always sh*t though, right? Who said that? Hemingway? Elmore Leonard?

For days now my poor family has been suffering my sighs, exclamations of horror and claims that I’ve been sent to sleep by my own manuscript. But no, that isn’t a bad sign, it’s just the sign of a crappy first draft. I am not a planner; I’m a flyer by the seat of my pantser so I had no idea where I was going. Of course it’s a mess but ‘writing is rewriting’ isn’t it? No-one has to see it until I’ve done some major surgery.

And there were good things. If I try to be fair and not totally panic-stricken the last 180 pages weren’t bad, in fact, I rather enjoyed them, so I must have learned something as I wrote. I had a good idea of the story by then. I noted in those pages that I went in late to scenes and got out early: excellent. The first 280 pages were quite awful and there’s a lot of work to do on them but if I can identify the better scenes, I can remedy the crappier ones. And my dialogue is mostly good even if my narrative stinks.

Okay; deep breath and no more talk of shredders.