In Today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* On Messy First Drafts: Umm, Why?
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
“It’s okay to create messy first drafts.” Dr. Diana Stout (after you’ve read this, see Of Interest)
On Messy First Drafts: Umm, Why?
I wasn’t even going to write a post today. Then I read my email, sat down, and wrote the following.
I have to admit, at this point of my tenure at TNDJ, I sincerely hope I’m preaching to the choir. But I have an uneasy feeling someone out there needs to hear this:
The quote of the day is excerpted from maybe the most cliché-ridden post on writing I’ve ever encountered.
Why would anyone intentionally write “messy first drafts”?
Of course, the answer is obvious: Despite whatever else she’s accomplished, at the writer’s core, s/he simply doesn’t believe in herself. She doesn’t believe herself capable—even if she believes that she believes herself capable.
Because she doesn’t believe she can succeed, she actually fails on purpose (I suppose to ‘get it out of the way’) then goes back and ‘fixes’ it.
All of that is a completely foreign concept to me.
Now, if a writer’s all right with that—if that’s how s/he chooses to live her life—more power to her. But I’ll never begin to be able to understand that kind of mindset.
Nor will I ever begin to be able to understand why anyone would want to turn something so insignificant as writing fiction into a burden, especially for other writers.
Why would anyone who doesn’t believe in herself want to teach others to not believe in themselves? Why drag others down into that abyss? Again, that’s a completely foreign concept to me.
I could go into great detail with dozens of examples of why I believe in myself, but fortunately most people wouldn’t be able to relate.
My childhood was rough, to put it extremely lightly. It was also my initial training ground in believing in myself. I literally survived from birth to 17 only by forcing myself to remain upright in mind if not in body through whatever was happening to me at the moment.
Then I escaped into Marine Corps bootcamp at 17, and it was largely a relief. And that’s where I pretty much completed my ‘believe in yourself’ training.
(Yes, my parents had to sign for me to enlist. My stepmom did so willingly. My dad signed so angrily that the pen tore through the paper.)
If you’re wondering, a lot of my childhood experiences leaked into my magic realism series of short stories (the character Maldito was autobiographical) and later into the novel Keeper of the Promise. Some of it also seeped into the novel Confessions of a Professional Psychopath.
So all of that comprises my street cred to talk about this topic. But the point is, over the entire scope of human history, those who believed in themselves are the ones who succeeded.
In the earliest days of that history, those who believed in themselves repeatedly tried and failed. But they kept trying, and eventually they succeeded and dragged food back to the cave.
During that same time, those who didn’t believe in themselves tried, failed, and became food. In modern times, they become (sometimes willingly) victims of “I Can’t.”
Belief in yourself doesn’t keep you from getting knocked down. In fact, it enables you to get knocked down. It gives those who want to knock you down a target.
But it also gives you the opportunity to learn and get back up. And eventually succeed.
In writing terms, believing in yourself basically means following Heinlein’s Rules:
- You put new words on the page,
- you don’t disrespect your creative subconscious by doubting yourself to the point of conscious-mind revision and rewriting, and
- you publish.
Then, no matter what kind of reviews or sales you get, no matter who ‘likes’ or ‘doesn’t like’ your work, you put more new words on the page, you don’t disrespect your creative subconscious by doubting yourself to the point of conscious-mind revision and and rewriting, and you publish again. And again. And again.
If you believe in yourself
- What you don’t do is intentionally write a messy first draft. Why not do the best you can the first time through? Duh.
- What you don’t do is a conscious-mind revision or rewrite. Why signal to your creative subconscious that you don’t believe in yourself?
- What you don’t do is seek critical input from others and then have the sheer audacity to take it to heart. Why signal to your creative subconscious that even your own critical mind, much less someone else’s, somehow knows your characters’ story better than the characters do?
The whole world is waiting to see what you’ve written and to be entertained.
But don’t kid yourself. Your stories and novels are only a few minutes’ or hours’ entertainment. They’re nothing more important than that. If you’re a fiction writer, what matters is that you write, not what you write.
And unlike in most other endeavors, in writing fiction ‘failure’ brings zero real-world consequences.
So if you want to write fiction, get over the ‘writing is an elevated calling’ nonsense, sit down, and put new words on the page.
I won’t even say you should write a ‘good’ story or novel. I’ll just say you should write a story or novel, then publish it and forget it. Some will like it, some won’t, and so what?
Seriously, your job isn’t to judge your writing. Your job is to write it in the first place. So get busy.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Common Questions Writers Are Asked Ugh. Completely and utterly ridiculous.
The Numbers
The Journal………………….. 950
Mentorship Words…………….. 0
Total Nonfiction…………………. 950
Writing of
Day 1…… XXXX words. To date………… XXXXX
Fiction for January………………………… XXXX
Fiction for 2026…………………………… XXXX
Nonfiction for January.…………………… 3030
Nonfiction for 2026………………..……… 22620
2026 consumable words………………… 22620
2026 Novels to Date……………………… 0
2026 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2026 Short Stories to Date……………… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 123
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 310
Short story collections……………………. 29