“Your side of the closet looks like it exploded,” I say to my husband. “Do you want help tidying up?”

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“No, stay out. I’m protesting Marie Kondo.”

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“By making a mess?”

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“It’s not a mess, it’s flung shui. I’m embracing the mess.”

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“Well, your mess is breeding. We have to do something before it takes over the neighborhood.”

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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.

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“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.”

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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.

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When you’re working on your first draft, you’re going to have pieces of writing like the Dorito Duffle.

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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.

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Here are 3 things to stop worrying about while you write your first draft:

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#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.

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#2 Firsts

First Line, First Page, First Chapter. Write them, get them on the page, then move on.

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#3 Grammar

Just write your book. Sure, grammar is important, but it’s more important that you get your story on the page.

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This first draft is for you, not anyone else.

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You can’t shove things off indefinitely. You will come back to it. All of it.

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While you’re writing your rough draft? Get to The End.

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Sometimes, you won’t know how to write the beginning until you’ve written THE END.

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Sometimes after finishing, you may want to shove the whole book in a drawer for a few months. Or years. (Forever?)

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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.

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Yet.

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Writing your first draft is not about getting it perfect. It’s about getting through it.

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Keep going.

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Xoxo

Jocelyn

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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.