Birth Your Darlings: The Art of Drafting

I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts.

— Anne Lamott

There may be no sight more disheartening or discouraging than a blank Word document on your computer. Hopefully, some of the pre-writing activities can help alleviate this despair, but at some point, no matter how prepared you are, you actually have to begin writing your draft.

But there's hope, and it's this: the first draft doesn't have to be good.

It doesn't even have to be kind of good. It can flat out stink—and if you're doing it right, it will. That's because drafting is just one part of the whole process. It's the part where you're just happy to get something written. Because believe me, as you'll see in the next chapter, it is so much easier to revise a draft than it is to fill a blank page. No one expects your first draft to be great. That's not what is expected of you, nor is it even possible, so don't waste a single second thinking that your first draft has to be anything other than an ugly, dripping mess of words.

Here are a few strategies that have helped me wade through the despair of drafting.

Bracketing

I haven’t heard anyone else use this term, so I might have made it up. A big part of my drafting process is what I call bracketing. It kind of goes along with the idea of free-writing and journaling in that you don’t want to break your creative flow by getting mired down in details and technicalities quite yet, nor do you want to risk the chance of forgetting good ideas by not writing them down.

[These are brackets]

Anything you put in a bracket [ ] is a note to yourself [this is where I’ll find some witty quote about bracketing]. Brackets can be used to remind you to include a quote, a citation, a factoid that you need to look up, or anything else that you’re not yet ready to tackle but will need to come back to eventually. I often bracket entire paragraphs: [snappy introduction here…maybe use that story about the kid who eats Legos].

The best thing you can do in the drafting phase is not get bogged down. Keep moving. Get your ideas on paper. Give yourself permission to make a mess of things. Bracketing goes a long way in allowing you to do this.

Storing Your Draft

We’re deeply enmeshed in the digital age, so it may seem hardly worth mentioning something as mundane as saving or storing your draft, but this is a real concern. I have had to console many a distraught student who lost hours of work due to computer viruses, lost thumb drives, server errors, and corrupted files. I know some of this is done on purpose, of course. It wasn’t that long ago that I was a student. I know the tricks to buying yourself more time, such as emailing your professor a corrupted file and hoping it’ll take a few days before she opens it, by which time you will have actually written the draft and can say, “Sheesh. I’m not sure what happened. Let me resend it.” But I have actually witnessed a lot of these technical glitches as they happened—and they have happened to me as well.

To save yourself from having to re-write your essay a half hour before it’s due, here are my recommendations for saving and storing your files.

Cloud Storage

If you don’t already have a cloud-storage account, set one up right now. There’s a good possibility your school already has a contract with Google or Dropbox or Microsoft that grants you free cloud storage. Take advantage of it. If not, there are several companies that offer free storage, such as Google Docs, Sky Drive, iCloud, and Dropbox (see the top of this page for links; I don't get kickbacks from any company, so I promise I am not promoting these for financial reasons!).

The concept behind cloud storage is straightforward: instead of just saving your work on your own computer, you save it on a remote hard drive using the Internet. These remote hard drives are usually in fortress-like vaults in the bowels of corporate buildings—there are no actual hard drives floating in the clouds. For example, if you upload a file to Dropbox, it saves it on their gigantic, secure hard drive, which is much more secure and well-maintained than your laptop. You still own the file, and you control who has access to it. “Sharing” files is a common feature of cloud storage, which allows invited guests to read or edit your file, which can be useful in collaborative projects or for letting someone edit your work. Or you can keep your files private, so no one but you has access to them. And then you can email them or print them or submit them to your professor just like any other file.

The beauty of cloud storage is that you can access your files from absolutely any computer, anywhere. Uploading and downloading files is quick and simple. The downside, though, is that it will reduce the number of technology-related excuses you can use to get out of an assignment. “My laptop was stolen,” “my hard drive crashed,” and “I dropped my thumb drive in the toilet” will no longer get you a deadline extension. Maybe you could say, “I forgot my password,” or, “the Internet is down,” but don’t count on your professor being overly sympathetic.

I recommend Dropbox—I’ve been using it for over a decade and have never had a single problem. I have tens of thousands of files saved, and I’ve only used a quarter of the free storage space they provide. Dropbox can also be installed on your own computer, so any file you save to your hard-drive automatically syncs to your Dropbox account. You can’t make file storage any easier than that.

Thumb Drives

Thumb drives are great because they’re cheap, they’re durable, they’re portable, and they can plug into just about any computer or device. They also don’t require the Internet to work. The downside, however, is that they are easily lost, stolen, or broken, and sometimes they are prone to file corruption. I’ve had several thumb drives over the years that simply stopped working. The files disappear or won’t open anymore. Also, thumb drives are susceptible to computer viruses. The next time you stick your thumb drive into a campus computer, think of how many other students have done the same thing. Who knows what viruses they’ve left behind?

I recommend thumb drives only as a short-term solution to storage, such as transporting your PowerPoint to class for that big presentation. But if you intend to save thousands of files on it for several years, you’re setting yourself up for a heap of heartache. Our campus library has a whole shoebox full of lost thumb drives, most of which probably contain important documents. On that note, if you should happen to lose a thumb drive, always check the lost and found. Even if it’s not there, you might find a nice Trapper Keeper or a pair of knockoff Ray Bans.

Thinking of the Future

There's a real joy that comes from shredding, burning, or tossing your papers at the end of the semester. When finals are over, you’ll probably flush the proverbial toilet to rid your brain of all the crap you've just crammed in there, and no doubt you’ll want to also purge your desk and bedroom of all the academic paraphernalia you’ve amassed: notebooks and folders and papers and textbooks.

I advise against this.

Like many things in life, it feels good—but only for a few seconds.

In college, I had the unfortunate experience of taking a "senior seminar"—a required course to graduate—and one of the main assignments was to create a portfolio that included at least five papers I had written during my undergraduate career. The problem, as you're probably guessing, was that I had gotten rid of every single paper. I had tossed my old floppy discs out the window like Frisbees. I had used my printed essays as fire-starter at my annual trip to my family cabin. I had deleted any traces of my assignments from my computer—not because it made me feel better, but because this was back when computers didn't come with much storage. Regardless of the reasons, I struggled to produce a portfolio for my senior seminar. I had to harass several of my previous professors. Fortunately, a couple of them still had some of my papers stowed away in their cabinets.

I've had other occasions throughout my life where I was tasked with writing something, and I knew I had already done something similar before: reports, resumes, cover letters, and so on. It was always such a huge relief when I could locate them on a disc or a server, or crumpled in the bottom of the milk crate I keep in my closet (full of receipts, instruction manuals, and rogue homework assignments).

So my advice is this: save everything you write. That's not a lot to ask nowadays. Word files take up almost no memory on your computer. Cloud storage is free. Thumb drives are cheap and small and easy to store. A folder or two in your desk drawer is a good place to stash already-printed papers. Whatever your method, save them. I guarantee that at some point, your future self will thank you for it. And then you'll thank me. You're welcome.