The Pitfalls of ''First Drafts''

Let me talk about my craft in an unbridled fashion, sharing my personal method and comparing it to common sense;

I've never understood the point of a first draft, a second draft, a seventeenth draft, a final draft. It seems absurd to me.

When I write, what I write is definitive. Sure, I'll spend some time editing as I write, but I don't just ''throw up'' on the pages, with the mindset that its good enough, that I'll come back later to fix it.

That's just silly to me.
Taking notes, exploring different paths, daydreaming and also deliberately focusing on aspects of the story is also highly effective.

It is a bit embarrassing but I have towers of notebooks, their pages filled with scribbles, drawings and sketches, chapters of forgotten novels and more.

In a way, I treat these notebooks as part of my mind, part of my daydreaming; they are a tool to harvest and materialize parts of the truth, before the final sculpting, the final painting.

It's funny, it is one of the most common advice I see online, to just get the story out and then rewrite it once or twice until its good enough...

Make it exist first, you can make it good later.

Madness!

Of course I write with inspiration, I need the proper mindet and ideas to ''Flow'', only then can I sit down and write for hours on end, at a quality that is quite good in my opinion. Such inspiration comes from the germination of the idea-seed, that I'll explain shortly.

All of my writings, my short stories, novels, poems are written that way. All, first drafts, with minimal editing.

After all I see writing as art, much like painting, sculpting, creating music... I don't see a painter painting the same piece several times, no. There is only one rendition of the idea.

Fatal and undeniable.

YonathanJ

that's how I view the creative act. The magic, in a way, of creativity; the buzzing mind laying down its truth.

Does this reasonate with you as a writer? I'd love to read your thoughts in the comments below.

The Idea-Seed

For any story comes from an idea, and that idea secretly germs and takes root somewhere along the surface of the mind, concepts and characters and ideas of ideas unconsciously exploring themselves.

And after much pondering and daydreaming, of just thinking about it, the hand reaches for the pen; the incubation is done.

From the idea-Seed; the story, revealed to you as you write it down, each word in its proper place, the unforeseen details suprising even you, the creator, the artist, the writer.

The itchy tired eyes, the back pain and the thirst, unavoidable when enthralled in the process of creation, the shutting off of the whole world for this duty, all-important.

And at last it is done. You sit still as your mind quiets itself after hours of work, you stare at the words, numb. You read it all, once, twice and a third time and you lose count, until it starts to feel a bit strange and confusing.

Fixing a few mistakes and choosing different words, maybe polish a few sentences, until you feel it, it is finished.

And so you go to bed, golden slumbers, to awake the next day revitalized! You sit down once more and read it all again, sort of detached, as if for the very first time, and you can't help thinking, I wrote that? I actually created that story, all of it, from me?

So full of talent, an exceptional writer, a genius of creativity, and all that delusion typical of the enthusiast writer, the passionate writer.

And so?

The Idea-Seed method is simply the way I choose to write. It's my own little ritual for inspiration. Don't get me wrong, a first draft is necessary, but it is already in your head!

The idea whirling about in your mind, striving to become, the seed, the desire to write about it, coalescing in these words on the pages, raw and pure, exempt of the inevitable self-censorship of endless rewritings and the loss of its magic, its essence.

In a way, the Idea-Seed method is simply spontaneity, visualizing the abstract cloud that it is and condensing it, creating it at last, materializing and bursting forth.

So yeah, to hell with first drafts and rewrites and unending editing and all that nonsense, diluting the truth...

Create and be done with it!