I’ve been having some trouble lately. A couple of months ago I developed a painful condition in one shoulder that led me to suspend typing for an extended period. I tried speech-to-text but I was unimpressed with the results. I tried writing longhand, but although I have found it a useful tool for unlocking creativity, it has its own limits. In the end, I just stopped writing until I could figure out what was wrong with my shoulder.
Well, now my shoulder is much better (thank you), but the writing hasn’t really gotten back on track. I’ve worked on some older stuff that only needed editing, and I did draft one flash piece, but I have two novels in progress on my hard drive, and they are currently “in progress” in name only.
The truth is they were struggling before I got hurt (for various reasons not relevant here), but the reason I can’t seem to return to them is a more fundamental one than any I was wrestling with before: It seems I have what I like to call Perfect First Draft Syndrome.
Perfect First Draft Syndrome is akin to writer’s block, but it’s less a problem with figuring out what to write than it is with simply getting underway on a project.
Anyone who has followed me for a while knows that I subscribe to the “shitty first draft” method spelled out in Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott. In essence, your first draft is your spitball draft, the throw-the-spaghetti-at-the-wall-to-see-if-it-sticks draft. This is where anything goes, just empty out your subconscious and see what lands of the page. It can be messy, it can be misspelled, it can be utterly incoherent—doesn’t matter. What matters is that somewhere down in that muddy puddle of words lie a few sentences that you can use, that tell a story. You pan for those and throw the rest away.
And you never, ever, show that draft to anyone. The knowledge that no one will ever see it will free you to set down the words you need.
Yeah, that’s what’s supposed to happen. But every writer has an editor in his head, and that editor can’t wait to weigh in even when you want him to shut up. When that editor gains the upper hand before you start to write the story, you get Perfect First Draft Syndrome. “What if it’s no good?” the editor asks. “It’s got to be great right out of the gate!” he insists.
Of course, none of this is true, but when the editor escapes from his assigned spot in your brain, he acts like an idiot. Think of him like the “suits” at movie studios who tell directors how to make a film even though they’ve never set foot on a set.
And yet, like the suits, the editor wields great power. He can stall a project just by standing there. He doesn’t even have to chain himself to a bulldozer. He simply looks you in the eye and asks: “Is this the best you can do?” even though you haven’t done it yet.
Still, he isn’t invincible. If he were, nothing would ever get written. The way past him is to write something, anything, so long as it is an unplanned, spontaneous piece, so the editor has no chance to jump in front of the train. It can be a flash story, for example, or even a blog post. Enough that you learn again how not to listen to the editor and just do the job of writing. The editor can have his shot later.
Sometimes this works immediately. Sometimes it doesn’t. But it helps to remember that nothing is ever perfect anyway. It doesn’t have to be. It just has to satisfy an editor.
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