June 2019
Hello from Indian Rocks Beach!
Missy and I are away on vacation, celebrating our wedding anniversary while grandma’s at the house watching the boys this weekend and doing whatever grandmas do whenever mom and dad are away (probably something involving lots of sweets). While our anniversary was last month, we needed to wait until school was out and sports activities were all done before we could finally get away for a kid-free weekend.
But today, I’m also celebrating finishing the first draft of Blake Jordan #6 on Friday!
First drafts are tricky things. Nobody has ever read one of mine… mostly because they’re terrible. They’re so bad that if God forbid anything ever happened to me before I could write a second draft, I’d hope Missy would find the file in my computer and delete it before it could ever see the light of day. Stephen King calls first drafts “writing with the door closed.” The story is just for the writer. First drafts require nothing more than being willing to write something bad so you can rewrite the story into something better.
So now I’m on phase two. I said what I wanted to say, and now with the next two rewrites, I need to say what I mean and make it into a story that will be remembered.
This story was so hard to write. If you read my last couple of newsletters, you probably could sense that I was struggling. You’d think the writing would get easier, but it doesn’t. And if I’m honest with you, the thing I was really struggling with was perfection.
I’m a recovering perfectionist. And it bleeds into every single part of my life. When Missy hangs a new picture on the wall, the first thing I check is if the frame is straight. When I work in my office, I have to have everything perfectly centered and symmetric.
And when I write a novel, I feel that same pull for everything to be perfect the first time.
But it never is. And it never should be. That’s The Lie we all deal with when trying to do something meaningful. We think it has to be perfect. We waste a lot of time making it so. But The Truth is the first draft of anything is never perfect. Even the final draft has its flaws. But you can’t get to a final draft if you’re not willing to write a bad first draft.
Last month, I was barely past the midpoint of my story. But I came to a realization while I was working: to stop aiming for perfection and instead, to try to get some perspective.
Because when you’re writing a novel, you don’t know if your story is going off the rails until you get to the end. You don’t know how things are going to connect until you’re finished and you can step back, take a good, hard look at the thing, and then judge it.
As soon as I decided to aim for perspective instead of perfection, everything changed.
The first draft is done. Now I know how to make the story better. I have perspective. I’ve won the battle against the dreaded first draft and I’m resting so I can win the war.
If you’re a recovering perfectionist, like me, try looking for perspective instead of perfection. It just might give you what you need to finish whatever you’re working on.