I Spy with My Critical Eye: Let Yourself Get Lost In Your First Draft

Writing a first draft requires a unique set of skills. All month, we’re asking authors to look back on their past first drafts… and the lessons they’ve learned from them. Today, Lisa A. Koosis, short story writer and 12-time NaNoWriMo participant , shares how she learned to paint herself into corners:

I never truly know what a book I’m writing is about until I’ve completed the first draft. Take my first year participating in NaNoWriMo, for example. I knew exactly the book I planned to write. Since I planned on expanding a short story I’d written, I knew the essential plot. I knew the characters. I knew the themes. I even knew how it ended.

Then something funny happened. Words started spilling from my pen, inky enigmas involving unplanned scenes, new characters, and bizarre plot twists. I realized I didn’t actually know my story at all…

The same has proved true every year I’ve participated, twelve years total. And it’s made me rethink how I approach a first draft. I’ve learned to follow the story wherever it wants to go, even if it doesn’t quite make sense, even if it’s the twistiest, bumpiest, hilliest road to the end.  Don’t worry about getting lost. Just keep pushing forward. Don’t stop.  

Write in the crazy. Write in the weird. Write in the downright awful. Paint yourself into corners, because sometimes in trying to paint yourself back out, you take yourself to amazing new places, on roads you’d never imagined. Go on and break the rules. Tell instead of show. Use adverbs. Write long, meandering flashbacks. Experiment. Do everything you wouldn’t do if you were writing deliberately, methodically, slowly.

Now, if your inner editor (like mine) won’t shut up, leave him love letters. Buy yourself colored pens, and scribble notes in the margins. Use your word processor’s highlighter feature or change your font color and type notes right between the words of your manuscript.  Ask questions. Make observations.  Note plot holes and inconsistencies and random thoughts and inspirations. You’ll give yourself thoughtful, useful material for revisions, without losing your forward motion. And somewhere in all that beautiful mess, is your story, the one you’ll now truly get to know.

Twelve years into my NaNoWriMo experience, and first drafts still surprise me, as does the inevitable light-bulb moment when I finally understand what my book is about. And so these days, I embrace that surprise, enjoy it, and let writing be the mystery that drew me to this craft in the first place. I hope you will, too.

Lisa A. Koosis is a prize-winning short story writer. You’ll find her work in magazines and anthologies, including Family Circle, The Poughkeepsie Journal, the Hugo-nominated Abyss & Apex, and the British-Fantasy-Award-winning Murky Depths. She is a twelve-time winner of NaNoWriMo and a NaNoWriMo ambassador. Lisa is represented by Brianne Johnson of Writers House. Visit her at lisakoosis.com or on Twitter at @MidnightZoo.

Top photo by Flickr user bikertect.