Blog Post: The First Draft

All right. You’re sitting down. Your cute little keyboard is out and making noises that YouTube swears no one else finds annoying. You’re writing. Thoughts are flowing. Kind of. You’re just writing gibberish, and honestly, that kind of makes you want to stop.

But DON’T. Because that’s how you get the first draft. There’s no blood, sweat, and tears just yet (okay, maybe some tears), this is just the part where you shut off your brain and mind dump every little idea you have even if you think it’s crappy. It’s the first draft for a reason. It doesn’t have to look pretty; it just has to look written.

Because, once it’s written, you have something to beautify. The first words aren’t there to look perfect, they’re just here to get written and push you toward your goal of having an eventual perfect post.

But you’ve probably heard all of this before. Every writing professor tells you not to worry about your first draft and just get it written. Some professors say to just do a free write and don’t even stop to fix the typos and grammatical errors that start screaming at you in the back of your mind. In fact, if you love writing, you’ve probably even heard a regular author or writer say to just get the first draft out.

That’s all a lot easier said than done, though, because even I still struggle to get something written and out. What are my credentials, you ask?

Well, I’m a neurodivergent who can’t sit still for very long (unless music is playing to distract me) and has written for a bit over a decade now. I’ve heard up and down the story of just getting your first draft out so you stop worrying about it.. But sometimes I struggle to even get writing, and instead I am simply struggling to find the right music to get my writing flowing and to get the right mood to get me writing. My brain needs it to be perfect for me to even get to the unperfect first draft, and honestly, it can be exhausting. I need constant reminders that this is the crappy first draft otherwise I focus too much on how the word “thought” now seems to be used too often or how I could or could not add a comma to a sentence, depending on what I want to get across. Or maybe I think about how long my sentences are and how I just keep talking, and talking, and talking, and talking for no reason. 

A yapper, even in writing.

Also, do you see the ADHD now? The train of thought is not thoughting. (Yes, that made up word is intentional)

Back on the train tracks, if we all will: writing the first draft.

Step one is always writing. Of course. But then the problem is, even if you get the first “The” written down, now you’re wondering what the second word is. And then you wonder what the second “The” should be, and now we’re back at square one wondering what the hell we should even be writing.

Turn off your brain. Don’t think. Turn on your favorite song, start singing to it, start dancing, and then type words that come to mind even if they’re nonsense. Get it out. Get the ideas flowing, get them going, and don’t worry about anything except writing and typing as fast as you can. I’m listening to the Korean artist Kim Jonghyun (Last name, first name—it’s Korean, remember?) and just sitting here yapping out my thoughts of writing. I don’t even know if this will be helpful, but I feel like it could be and that’s all the first draft needs.

A single thought.

A few words.

And then suddenly you’re at ~650 words (give or take).

Step two? Well, I think I mixed in the other steps with step one, but honestly—just WRITE! Write the typoes (yes, intentional), write the stupid thought, write the thought you’re not even sure about (you can research later). If you feel like you can’t type fast enough, then figure out the whole speech-to-text thing. There’s really no excuse anymore with technology (that doesn’t mean go talk to Chat-GPT to write your first draft, he’s only there to give you an idea or to check for typos).

Really, if it helps, think of your first draft as your journal. You’re just getting out scraps of ideas that don’t need to look pretty. The second draft is where you can start refining. But we’re not there yet. We’re here to talk about that quote in the book you didn’t really like but have to analyze so you can get an A in your class. We’re here to make sentences that don’t really make sense, but made sense in the moment, and that’s all that matters because we can fix it later.

Do you get the idea?

Sit down. Turn on some music. Dance a little. Pull up the word doc or google doc. Then put your game face on and start yapping.

And just like that, you got your first draft!