Against the Shitty First Draft

By Gabriela Denise Frank

Can we strike shitty first draft from our vocabulary?

No wants to do a shitty job at anything. Writing time is precious and we know words matter, yet we erode our efforts with faux-cheerful statements: “I’m writing my shitty first draft this weekend!”

It’s just an expression, you say. It doesn’t mean anything.

Well, honey, self-talk matters.

We seek to move people with the same language we use to label our writing shitty. When this phrase infiltrate...