My drafts are tangled and confused!

So, you’ve given yourself permission. You’ve made the space. Now it’s time to draft.

I will be frank: this is my least favorite part of writing. I feel like that makes me a freak (do you sense a theme here?) since writers are, you know, supposed to enjoy writing? And I do enjoy writing, but much more the fixing part than the vomiting out raw material part. Because that’s what drafting is for me.

I will be frank once more: though the thought of an outline gives me the chills, I really work better with one. Usually I try to draft too early and the first draft turns into a truncated, Frankenstein-like thing with lots of brackets and indicators of things to add. When I was writing The Heroine’s Bookshelf I would outline each chapter in five lines or less. It helped me know where to go when I got lost (and wow, did I get lost).

Drafting is terrifying to a control freak like me. It all looks so disgusting! It’s weird and doesn’t get anywhere near where I’d like it to go! But beneath all that grossness is a big leap, a sense of “here goes nothing, I am just going to show up and go through this crazy process” that always leads to serendipitous and good things. Drafting is where I really get in touch with my gnarly, confused subconscious, and my best drafts are totally unfamiliar to me once they’ve been written. It’s like creating a ball of tangled yarn. It’s disgusting and weird. I promise. And then it’s over and I can do what I do way better…editing.

How about you? Do you enjoy drafting?