Yeah, that’s right. I just checked Dictionary.com to see if it was “boozy” or “boozey.” Want to make something of it? Also, did you know “boozily” is a word? Let me tell you, this is a lexicon I can get behind. And I will get behind it boozily.
So. Yes. First drafts.
Till very recently I’ve always been a slow first draft writer. I would try to write at a polished, final-draft level on the very first pass. I knew I’d still have to revise, of course. But that’s just how I operated. That’s how I had always operated; that’s what writing meant to me.
I knew that other writers did things differently. “The first draft is the beach-storming draft,” says Wendig, and he didn’t invent the concept. You’ll hear lots of authors talk about how a shitty first draft is just part of their process. I knew that, too. But I stayed…careful. Too careful, I think.
For the short story I’m working on now, for Machine of Death volume 2, I threw careful out the window. (Don’t worry, it landed in an eco-friendly recycle bin.) I downed three beers rapid-fire and tore through a draft as quick as I could. Five minutes agonizing over the name of every character? Nope. Ten minutes fiddling with the structure of a single sentence? Negative. Get it out, just go, vomit up all the ideas and feelings inside you in roughly the proper order, and see what you have.
Turns out, the boozy first draft? Pretty righteous.
Yeah, a lot of it gets cut, rewritten, rearranged. But that’s fine, because that probably needed to happen anyway. Rough draft is rough. And because you’re roaring through fast and reckless, the energy and the emotion stay raw, and you don’t water it down by over-thinking.
(Checking Dictionary.com…nope, “overthinking” isn’t a word, so the hyphen stays. Yes, I do this with every single post. Irony!)
And Dad, if you’re reading this – yep, you gave me this advice a long time ago. I should’ve listened. Kids these days, you know?
Anyway. The process constantly evolves, and if sometimes the process demands more Sam Adams, well, that’s a sacrifice I can learn to accept.
Now the question is: will it work? That July 15 deadline for Machine of Death submissions is coming up awful quick…stay tuned, I’ll keep you posted.
HA! Get it? Posted? Because it’s a blog, and…
I’m going, I’m going.
Brian D. Buckley 
haha – I wonder if this works in other areas of life? Does being boozy make everything better?!
I think you already know the answer to that. 😉
I don’t drink, really, so I’m going to have to find another way to get into the right mindset for storming the beach. I’m like you typically: I try to tread carefully, even though I’d give anything for the process to go faster. But I WANT to be able to chuck it all out the window and just “vomit” my ideas onto the page. I want to be that kind of a writer. Not because it’s a better or easier way, but because I think it would fit my personality (i.e., impatience) better.
Trying it out on a shorter piece is a good idea…
I talked about drinking because that’s what I did, and it does help loosen the literary inhibitions a little, but I definitely don’t think it’s necessary. You referred to “the right mindset” and I think that’s exactly it – it’s just a certain way of thinking about the process. I tell myself I’m going to keep writing, don’t stop anywhere for long, and if I get stuck, I just need to write *something* (however bad) as a placeholder to keep me going.
Now, in my case, I did all this *after* I had figured out a basic outline for the story, so I had some structure to propel me forward. I don’t think I ever have sat down and cranked out a first draft without any plan at all. But your mileage may vary.
Am I the only writer who doesn’t drink? Maybe I should start…
But I usually can get high with just breathing. Something in my blood I think. I’m just weird.
I like your blog (man that sounds so corny). I love that you brought up Wendig’s storming beach metaphor for writers. I was thinking about it all day today and I want to write something about it. Hopefully it’ll be tomorrow’s blog post.
I think it’s good to just puke it all out is because when you go in too carefully, you have a filter and this filter, even though it might get rid of the trash, it’ll also remove the diamonds before you even realize they’re there. So it’s better to just lay it all down there without a filter and then sort through it later.
That’s what I think anyways.
Hi Amber! Thanks, I like your blog too. 🙂
As for drinking, nah, don’t start if you don’t want to. Writers don’t need booze to be crazy. (Though it does help sometimes…) And I think you’re exactly right about the filter and the diamonds. By avoiding the lows, you miss the highs…