{"id":3767,"date":"2012-12-12T22:27:31","date_gmt":"2012-12-12T22:27:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/?p=3767"},"modified":"2013-12-14T17:07:46","modified_gmt":"2013-12-14T17:07:46","slug":"two-ideas-to-get-you-through-the-1st-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/two-ideas-to-get-you-through-the-1st-draft\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Ideas to Get You Through (The 1st Draft)"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter<\/a>, you already know that I began writing the third installment in the Dakota Stevens Mystery Series last Monday, and that I’ve written about 18,000 words so far.<\/p>\n

What you don’t know, because I haven’t spoken about it at all, is what a bitch this first draft has been.<\/p>\n

The tension of\u00a0not knowing exactly where the story is going<\/em> is killing me.<\/p>\n

It’s been a while, you see, since I had to write a Dakota novel from scratch. The last time I sat down and started a first draft was seven years ago.<\/p>\n

Seven years.<\/p>\n

Obviously, I’ve written first drafts of other work since then\u2014stories, essays and speeches mostly\u2014but nothing compares to the intricacy of a novel.<\/p>\n

Which is why I’ve recently taken great solace in two quotes on writing by two masters: E.L. Doctorow and Bernard Malamud.<\/p>\n

\"93007665\"Doctorow compared writing\u2014particularly writing a novel\u2014to driving at night through fog. “You can only see as far as your headlights,”<\/em>\u00a0 he said, “but you can make the whole trip that way.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Whenever I’ve found myself getting frustrated with not being able to see the story more than a chapter or so ahead, I’ve thought of Doctorow’s quote:\u00a0“You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The second quote, by Bernard Malamud,\u00a0was directed to writers in general:\u00a0“Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.”<\/em><\/p>\n

This is especially apropos to the writing of a first draft\u2014the very definition of uncertainty.<\/p>\n

Learning to be comfortable with uncertainty is imperative for a writer. Uncertainty about where the story is going. Uncertainty about how it will be received. Uncertainty about finances. Uncertainty of all kinds.<\/p>\n

These two ideas\u2014uncertainty, and seeing as far as your headlights\u2014are getting me through the first draft, and they’ll get you through, too.<\/p>\n

\u2014Chris<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you already know that I began writing the third installment in the Dakota Stevens Mystery Series last Monday, and that I’ve written about 18,000 words so far. What you don’t know, because I haven’t spoken about it at all, is what a bitch this first draft has … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,3,19,36,11,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chris-orcutt-books","category-craft","category-fiction","category-mystery-writing","category-dakota-stevens-mysteries-series","category-writingexperiences"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3767"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4898,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3767\/revisions\/4898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}