Ok, here goes: My first blog post on the new website. It has to be great. And since this is a writing website, it has to be perfect, too. And inspired; it needs to feel real and exciting—the kind of instantly involving post that will not only rope the reader in, but leave them with something of true value. That's why I’m writing this last: I wanted to give my ideas time to germinate, to coalesce into that great, perfect, inspired, real, exciting, and involving post of true value that I know I need.
Only they didn't.
My ideas. They just laid there. Dead.
It was actually fairly predictable. You see, I had forgotten my own first rule of writing: Write Badly. It doesn't matter if you're working on a book report, a college application essay, a screenplay, or a blog: If you want to write truly well, write as abominably as you can.
I don’t mean write a rough draft. I mean, really write badly. Write before you're prepared to write. Write something you wouldn't show to anyone. Something so bad even you don’t want to look at.
For most of my clients this doesn't come naturally. We've been taught all our lives to write as well as we can, to put in our best effort, to live up to our potential. The idea of writing badly just seems… wrong. But it is the first and most essential step to writing well. And it’s sooooo much easier.
It only takes a minute or two to spew out a bad paragraph. And usually that leads you to another. And another. Along the way you may stumble upon some new idea or a scene that you'd never thought of before. Since you're writing badly, it's no big deal to just toss this in without worrying about making it fit. Before you know it, you have a finished first draft.
A truly terrible finished first draft.
But the funny thing is, it's not really that bad. Everything you wanted to say has somehow found its way into the thing. Sure, it’s all out of order and unfocused, and surrounded by a lot of irrelevant stuff, but at least it's there. It's on the page. Now you have something to work on. Now it's only a matter of editing--
...but that's a subject for another post.
In the meantime, go off and write badly! Have fun with it, and don't forget to let me know how it works out.
Only they didn't.
My ideas. They just laid there. Dead.
It was actually fairly predictable. You see, I had forgotten my own first rule of writing: Write Badly. It doesn't matter if you're working on a book report, a college application essay, a screenplay, or a blog: If you want to write truly well, write as abominably as you can.
I don’t mean write a rough draft. I mean, really write badly. Write before you're prepared to write. Write something you wouldn't show to anyone. Something so bad even you don’t want to look at.
For most of my clients this doesn't come naturally. We've been taught all our lives to write as well as we can, to put in our best effort, to live up to our potential. The idea of writing badly just seems… wrong. But it is the first and most essential step to writing well. And it’s sooooo much easier.
It only takes a minute or two to spew out a bad paragraph. And usually that leads you to another. And another. Along the way you may stumble upon some new idea or a scene that you'd never thought of before. Since you're writing badly, it's no big deal to just toss this in without worrying about making it fit. Before you know it, you have a finished first draft.
A truly terrible finished first draft.
But the funny thing is, it's not really that bad. Everything you wanted to say has somehow found its way into the thing. Sure, it’s all out of order and unfocused, and surrounded by a lot of irrelevant stuff, but at least it's there. It's on the page. Now you have something to work on. Now it's only a matter of editing--
...but that's a subject for another post.
In the meantime, go off and write badly! Have fun with it, and don't forget to let me know how it works out.
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