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THE JOYS OF WRITING THE FIRST DRAFT!

first drafts are stuck somewhere in between

easy and really friggin' hard. you have everything planned out (or maybe you don't, whatever your process is) and a general idea of where you want your story to go (hopefully) but now it's up to you to put the words on that paper. this gives you a ton of creative freedom; you don't always have to go in the direction you had planned. and if you don't like it later, you can always change it. therefore, first drafts are literal chaos.

a lot of people put pressure on themselves to make their first drafts perfect, and i mean perfect. that works for some people, editing as they go, but personally i like to save editing for after the draft is done. nothing has to be perfect. you can stick in all the abbreviations you want, your descriptions can be, well, bad, you can switch tenses, you can do whatever. the main point of the first draft is to get the words down on paper, so mistakes are a given. you can fix everything later, but you can't fix nothing.

what's even better? the only way to improve is through practice. whether you know it or not, these first drafts are practice for you; you learn how to edit and how to grow or shrink your word count. you learn about characterization, world-building, and plot. you learn about yourself as a writer, what your strengths and your weaknesses are. everything is a learning experience, but today i'm focusing on the first draft. this is why the first read-through is so important (and why it's probably a good idea to take notes), is so you learn more about yourself and your writing habits. you can't fix what you don't know about.

i could go on and on, but by the time i finish my list will be about a mile long. these were the first few reasons that came to mind; in short, appreciate your first drafts! everyone started somewhere. you have to be bad before you can become good, and the only way to do that is through practice. so celebrate your mistakes, especially because you caught them - you're growing as a writer! don't ever let yourself be discouraged by your first draft, because there's no limit on how much you can fix.

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this was so helpful i'm

i hope this helped :-)