Creativity Corner #3: No falling in love

I did my job—I turned out a first draft. I knew it was far from final, but still there were some parts I found myself returning to frequently, proud of the ideas or a turn of phrase. I sent it out to my writing coach for feedback, but I wasn’t going to see her for another two weeks. I knew I needed to take a break from writing for a while, but I kept opening up the document, re-reading my favorite parts. Uh oh, I thought. Better not fall in love.

Falling in love with a first draft is as helpful as marrying someone midway through your first date. It may be good fodder for a reality show, but it’s disastrous in real life. I knew this even as I congratulated myself for being clever, even as I saw a t-shirt bearing a somewhat obscure phrase that I’d made central to one of my favorite passages. I bought the shirt. Even if the phrase didn’t survive editing, at least it looks good.

As I write this, I cannot tell you if that phrase will survive. I sent the manuscript, well, 80% of it, to my writing coach and she gently told me exactly what I’d expected: there’s a lot of good material there, but I need to restructure the story. I won’t know how radically that changes the bits I liked until I figure out a different way to start the book. Small detail, right?

I’m still working on it. At the moment, I have four different openings—maybe, when I review what I wrote over lunch today, five. I fully understand that I may get to 50 before the great Aha! The writer Mary Karr said she worked on the first paragraph of her first memoir, Liars Club, for eight months before she was satisfied enough to continue. I don’t usually recommend that approach for a first draft—in my opinion, it’s better to get the material OUT than to obsess about getting every word right. But Karr is now known as an exceptional memoirist, so she clearly knew what she was doing.

Stay tuned.