A.\u00a0 That\u2019s just what first drafts are.\u00a0 They\u2019re painful and ugly.\u00a0 They wander down dead ends and come out smelling like old fish.<\/p>\n
Q.\u00a0 I thought I liked my main character, but now, she\u2019s just, I don\u2019t know, hopelessly clich\u00e9.<\/p>\n
A.\u00a0 I know. And her dialogue is unbelievable and stilted, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n
Q.\u00a0 Yes! Or the characters talk in circles and get nowhere.\u00a0 And then I try to add conflict, and it\u2019s just like guns and knives dropping everywhere.\u00a0 Who cares?<\/p>\n
A.\u00a0 Believe me.\u00a0 I know.<\/p>\n
![\"PondFeb2013\"](\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/PondFeb2013.jpg\")
Q.\u00a0 And it\u2019s so shallow!\u00a0 This book has no depth whatsoever.\u00a0 It has no point.<\/p>\n
A.\u00a0 Have you added magic yet?\u00a0 A flying pony?<\/p>\n
Q.\u00a0 Oh, my god.\u00a0 How did you know?\u00a0 It\u2019s terrible.\u00a0 Just terrible!<\/p>\n
A.\u00a0 Yeah.\u00a0 That\u2019s your first draft.\u00a0 It\u2019s going to be horrible.\u00a0 The worst thing you\u2019ve ever seen.<\/p>\n
Q.\u00a0 Why am I doing this?\u00a0 I could be looking for a real job.\u00a0 I could be folding laundry.\u00a0 Nobody\u2019s ever going to want to read this.<\/p>\n
A.\u00a0 That\u2019s not true.\u00a0 Your mother will want to read it.<\/p>\n
Q.\u00a0 (Moans, grumbles, shreds hair)<\/p>\n
A.\u00a0 Look.\u00a0 Quit complaining.\u00a0 Nobody\u2019s making you write this book.<\/p>\n
Q.\u00a0 But I want to!<\/p>\n
A.\u00a0 Then just do it.\u00a0 It\u2019s going to be bad.\u00a0 Really, really horribly stinking bad.\u00a0 Nobody fully understands why, but that\u2019s just how first drafts are.\u00a0 You force yourself to get a draft down, whether its 120 or 250 or 450 pages.\u00a0 You get the thing down, and then you go back to the beginning and read it to see what\u2019s there.<\/p>\n
Q. 450 pages!\u00a0 You can\u2019t be serious.\u00a0 I have 64!<\/p>\n
A. Do you want to be a writer or not?<\/p>\n
Q. I do.\u00a0 I guess.<\/p>\n
A. Do you?<\/p>\n
Q. (snivels) Okay, I do.<\/p>\n
A. Then you have to write.\u00a0 You have to finish the first draft.\u00a0 You have to get it down on the page.\u00a0 Nobody can do it for you.\u00a0 You have to do the job.<\/p>\n
Q. But what if it\u2019s never good enough?\u00a0 What if I put in all this work and it\u2019s never, ever good enough to get published?<\/p>\n
A. Would that break your heart?<\/p>\n
Q. I think it would.<\/p>\n
A. Then let me tell you a secret.\u00a0 You\u2019re a good writer.\u00a0 You\u2019re a really good writer.\u00a0 There\u2019s something about your characters or your voice or your descriptions or your understanding of humanity that shows up in your work that nobody else can do.\u00a0 You are the only one who can write the way you do.\u00a0 The only one.\u00a0 And you are brilliant.<\/p>\n
Q. How do you know?<\/p>\n
A. Because I can tell.\u00a0 Because you care this much.\u00a0 You have to have faith in yourself.\u00a0 Plenty of writers who have already published books still have to bushwhack their ways through their first drafts, too.\u00a0 It\u2019s just what it takes.<\/p>\n
Q. Do you promise this isn\u2019t just a huge waste of time?<\/p>\n
A. Ha! No, I don\u2019t.\u00a0 I don\u2019t promise anything.\u00a0 But I\u2019ll tell you this.\u00a0 You can do it.\u00a0 You can go start the next scene.<\/p>\n
Q. Just the next scene?<\/p>\n
A. That doesn\u2019t sound so hard, does it?\u00a0 Just go start the next scene and see where it takes you.<\/p>\n
Q. I could probably do that.<\/p>\n
A. I thought so.\u00a0 Don\u2019t you have fun when you\u2019re actually writing?<\/p>\n
Q. Yes.\u00a0 I mean, I used to, until I started worrying.<\/p>\n
A. Quit worrying.\u00a0 Let yourself have fun again.\u00a0 You\u2019re just telling a story.<\/p>\n
Q. I\u2019m just telling a story.\u00a0 I like that.<\/p>\n
A. Yep.\u00a0 That\u2019s all.\u00a0 Just keep writing.\u00a0 You can do it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A.\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 You should. I know the first draft is awful, and even as you\u2019re writing it, you can see you\u2019ll have to cut most of it, but go forward anyway.\u00a0 Get to the end. Q.\u00a0 But why, why?\u00a0 It\u2019s so bad!\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t even make sense. A.\u00a0 That\u2019s just what first drafts are.\u00a0 They\u2019re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[63,37],"class_list":["post-2665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-ha","tag-writing-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2665"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2669,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2665\/revisions\/2669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}