there's a deflated Dorito Duffle in my closet
“Your side of the closet looks like it exploded,” I say to my husband. “Do you want help tidying up?”
“No, stay out. I’m protesting Marie Kondo.”
“By making a mess?”
“It’s not a mess, it’s flung shui. I’m embracing the mess.”
“Well, your mess is breeding. We have to do something before it takes over the neighborhood.”
I pull out an oversized duffle bag from behind a rack of winter coats. The duffle bag has been migrating around the closet, flung from shelf to floor and back again. It’s a safety orange fake-cheese color. It’s too awkward as a carry on. Not big enough for a body.
“It looks like a giant deflated Dorito. What do you want me to do with this Dorito Duffle? I’ll put it in The Room.”
I don’t know how you clean your house, [FIRST NAME GOES HERE], but cleaning house around here involves shoving things into the guest bedroom, AKA The Room, and closing the door until we decide what to do with them.
When you’re working on your first draft, you’re going to have pieces of writing like the Dorito Duffle.
You’re not ready to get rid of them, but you’re not sure what to do with them or if you want to keep them either.
Here are 3 things to stop worrying about while you write your first draft:
#1 Title
Give your book a working title. If you can’t come up with something quick, name your book what it’s about — A Woman Searching For her Husband After He Disappears into The Room.
#2 Firsts
First Line, First Page, First Chapter. Write them, get them on the page, then move on.
#3 Grammar
Just write your book. Sure, grammar is important, but it’s more important that you get your story on the page.
This first draft is for you, not anyone else.
You can’t shove things off indefinitely. You will come back to it. All of it.
While you’re writing your rough draft? Get to The End.
Sometimes, you won’t know how to write the beginning until you’ve written THE END.
Sometimes after finishing, you may want to shove the whole book in a drawer for a few months. Or years. (Forever?)
Writers will spend hours, days, weeks, trying to perfect these three elements before they need to. They end up spinning on a hamster wheel, going nowhere over things that don’t matter.
Yet.
Writing your first draft is not about getting it perfect. It’s about getting through it.
Keep going.
Xoxo
Jocelyn
Hello!
My name is Jocelyn.
Story warrior, book lover, day dreamer, gardener, and creative. I help serious writers roll up their sleeves, get their novel ready for publishing, and reach readers. When I’m not elbow-deep in the story trenches, I’m outside world-building in my garden and battling weeds with my three criminal mastermind cats.
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