Craft of Writing: First drafts suck.

Dear Reader,

There's a general rule about writing anything. Your first draft is going to suck. It may not suck entirely. It may just have whirlpools of suckage interspersed through the flow of the story that interrupt it. It may have characters that are useless sacks of meat that should be drop kicked into the nearest black hole. It may have too many "they thought" and "[character] raised their eyebrow" to make it seem like the character is mentally constipated and have an infinitely high forehead.

These points can make you feel a measure of despair that your entire work is garbage. Writing the first draft of a story is shoveling a pile of shit into a pot with a few seeds. The word vomit portion of writing is the pile of shit. The ideas behind the word vomit portion of the writing are your seeds. The whole contraption is going to smell awful. It's going to make you feel a little sick looking at it, depending on just how the word vomit portion of writing went. There may be a brief rush of glory because "behold, I hath birthed a book/poem/etc."

Don't let that rush of glory in the completion of the first draft fool you into rushing to publish immediately. It's still a pile of shit in a pot with a few seeds, not a rosebush yet. Set the manuscript aside, even if it is for only a month. Then bust out that infamous red pen of doom. Sit down with your manuscript and read it critically, as if you are going to be graded on it by your evil high school English teacher who kept the meter stick handy. Don't feel bad if your manuscript comes out looking like it was part of a murder scene. You're doing surgery on your story and surgery gets a bit bloody.

Rewrite your story with your edits. Save that ugly first draft to reference when you are not sure about a character's name on page whatever. Repeat the process of letting it marinate in the dark of a desk drawer, bloodying it with your pen, and rewrite. Do this as many time as you need to until the real story, the ideas you are writing about, shine clearly. The entire process of editing and revision takes that black hole of a manuscript and turns it into a star through alchemy, sweat, and heartache.

Don't give up on that pile of shit in a pot with a few seeds. Love and care means that editing mercilessly and revising the whole business will get you that rosebush you were looking for. And remember, seeds need to have time in the dark to germinate and grow.