Our class motto when you study with me:

We Don’t Hang Out in the Shallows,

We Delve Deep Into the Current of Our Creativity.
C. Susan Nunn

Yes, you may feel like dancing in the wind, celebrating this milestone of having your first draft done, but not so fast. What exactly is a first draft and is it really done?

There are many teachers, and I have had my share of them who told me to put everything I could think of in that first draft, everything but the kitchen sink. But, through the years, I have decided that is not such a good idea. First, let’s decide what we are writing.

If we are writing memoir, for instance, then piling in everything we experienced throughout our life is not a good idea. A memoir consists of one event like a Spiritual Journey, or an illness or how you mastered Mt. Everest. As an example, let’s take Mt. Everest. We know one does not just fly into Tibet and start climbing, but that it is a long haul of practice and scaling smaller mountains as we work toward the big one. It is a huge commitment of physical fitness. And in the memoir, it may reach throughout one’s lifetime, but the focus is the one main event. Reaching the top. So piling in everything but the kitchen sink does nothing but clog up the works.

Now, if we are writing a novel, we have more options unless of course, if you are writing “formula” types like murder/private detective types, or romance, then you have to follow that which is set forth by those genres.

Let’s discuss for a moment the story of Michelangelo and the sculpture David that he created, and how it relates to our writing. This example has been handed down through the ages, but here is one I believe says it the best. In his book, Editing Your Fiction, Michael Seidman says:

It’s said that Michelangelo, when asked about his statue of David, replied that he began with a block of stone and chipped away everything that wasn’t the young king. The writing process is much the same: You begin with something, take away everything that isn’t what you want in the finished work, and what’s left is the novel or story or essay or poem that you want to present. It doesn’t matter what you’re writing, you have to do the same thing.

To extend the metaphor, if revision is the act of removing what doesn’t matter, your first draft is quarrying the stone with which you’ll work, that for us is writing the first draft.

But keep this in mind: PEN/Faulkner Award winning novelist David Bradley reminds us that a sculptor takes the chips and flakes that have come away and sweeps them out at the end of the day; as a writer, you have the opportunity to pick those pieces up and blend them into the almost finished work later.

So, let’s think of this first draft this way. First, we need to know, which I imagine most of you already know whether you are writing a memoir or fiction. Think of the mess author James Frey got himself into when declaring A Million Little Pieces a memoir, then having Oprah jump on board at such an amazing story, only for it to be exposed as mostly fiction. What a mess it all became and pulling Oprah into it as well. Be honest.

In this Free Webinar – we will have an in-depth discussion as to what makes a good, solid first draft in Memoir, which is Creative Nonfiction, or for a novel. It will be power-packed, so bring a notebook and pen, or your tablet or laptop, for some serious note taking.