My Rules for First Drafts
+ a workbook to get that new year groove back
HAPPY ALMOST SPRING
Hello my honeybees! 🍯 Busy busy over here as I get ready to head to Los Angeles for the AWP Conference with Rose Books & Morning Writing Club.
If you’re unfamiliar: AWP is a tremendous writing conference that meets every year in a different city. How tremendous? Around 12,000 writers attend. Some call it overwhelming. I call it pretty stinkin’ fun. But then again, I’m an extrovert who loves being around writers more than almost anything.
If you’re attending the conference: come say hi to me at booth 1110, which is also my birthday. Synchronicity abounds these days.
TODAY'S NEWSLETTER
I’ve been working on the first draft of a new novel. The process has been joyful, but tough. Recently, I had to write a set of rules in order to keep pressing forward. There are five of them. I’m pleased to say that they’re doing the trick. They’re keeping me on track, but they’ve also opened up space for play in the process.
RULES FOR FIRST DRAFTS ↴
1. Your job: show up to the document and pay attention.
And trust that the rest will fall into place.
2. Tell, don't show.
Yeah, I know: isn’t it usually “show, don’t tell?” But it dawned on me recently that you have to tell the story before you can show the story.
Right now, don't waste your energy on showing. That is a premature effort.
3. Treat every part of the draft as temporary: especially the opening.
What have we learned from writing one novel and helping others with theirs? The opening chapter will change approximately 8.025 billion times: once for every person there is on this earth.
The story has to begin somewhere, so begin it and keep going.
Keep in mind: the opening 20 pages will eventually receive the most love and attention. Trust in the love that is on its way, and for now, simply let the opening be. Continuing on in the story past the opening will help you figure out where the story actually needs to open.
4. When the going gets tough, the tough start kissing.
Or, rather, the tough (me) make their protagonist start kissing. Or think about kissing.
Whenever you feel overwhelmed or bored by this novel, write a kissing scene. Because who doesn’t love a kissing scene?
5. Remember: you're allowed to write a bad novel.
A bad novel is a novel nonetheless.
Show up. Exist in the story. Don't worry about making it good. Making it good is Future Hurley's job. The Hurley of Now is responsible for getting the story on the page.
You have to put in the drywall before you can start painting.
PROLONG THE NEW YEAR ENERGY
It’s suddenly almost springtime, and I’m really missing that fresh-start feeling that felt so palpable at the start of the year. Perhaps you can relate!
Today, I offer a workbook I created called Intentions to Victories: Prompts to Re-Invigorate Your 2025 Intentions.
The workbook is filled with prompts that’ll get you thinking about how you might actually ~want~ to spend the rest of 2025. Download the workbook for $10.
I love this - that first draft stage (or, as I like to call it, the "shiterative" stage) is, I think, where so many people give up on writing. I've noticed this especially with younger writers - the post-Millennial generations especially - who I think are so steeped in the awareness that they're "MAKING CONTENT" or that they have a perpetual audience that it's exceedingly difficult for them to just experiment and mess up and learn from the mistakes. (To honor their errors as hidden intention, if I might borrow from one of my favorite worthwhile dilemmas.)
But if you don't get the bad ideas out with the good ideas, how can you winnow them later? How can you figure out where not to go? We collectively labor under the myth of genius, of the perfect art born from the brow of the godhead in one smooth and supple movement, but that's not what happens at all.
It's also why I'm so decidedly against AI "art" - art's not supposed to be a frictionless experience; if there's not something at risk, something to overcome in the process of making, it lacks the heft of meaning tested and refined through the process of making.
Relating to getting a first draft down, I loved this post about "toxic preconditions" involved in writing. "We form a series of toxic preconditions — misguided beliefs about what writing must be, in order to be 'worth it.'"
https://substack.com/@sj1984/p-155000734