B is for the Beauty of Barf (AtoZChallenge)

A to Z Blogging Challenge

By writergrrrl on April 3, 2017 • ( 10 Comments )

With apologies to anyone emetophobic who may be reading

There are some writers who agonize over their first drafts. As I understand it, their process goes something like this:

1. Write an opening clause

2. Reconsider

3. Rework the opening clause, add a comma and consider how to continue. For half an hour. Tentatively write the second part of the first sentence and realize that there was a much better way to write the first half.

4. Rework the first half of the sentence. Fiddle about with word choice for another 20 minutes. The chosen words seem ok, but the order isn’t quite right. Rearrange.

5. The first part of the sentence is sounding pretty good but now it doesn’t flow well into the second half.

6. Rewrite the second half.

7. Read both halves together and realize perhaps the opening would be stronger with two sentences.

8. Remove comma, period and capital letter.

9. Both sentences are now too short. The opening is definitely choppy.

10. Enhance both sentences. This takes up the better part of an hour.

11. At the end of all that (and a bit of final tweaking) the opening sounds pretty damned fine. It’s lunchtime but half a paragraph is better than none.

I imagine this meticulous ‘edit-as-you-go’ strategy is why some writers take a decade to get to the end of their first draft. For those who manage to stay the course and actually get to the end of anything by writing this way, wow. Hats off to you! (And please, if you are a writer who works this way, please leave a comment and share how on earth you motivate yourself to keep going and also, how do you cope when an editor makes a suggestion? Or, does this method work so well for you that no further rewriting is necessary?)

Farting Around As I Go is Not For Me

You don’t have to be a genius to figure out I don’t work this way.  I am firmly camped in the school of barf. Now there’s a sentence that might not get past a writer who insists on perfection at every step of the way. Mixed metaphors, images that make little sense, a spare adverb. A certain ‘huh? I think I get what she’s trying to say’ response quite likely to be elicited in the reader. Nevertheless, for the sake of this example, I will press on with this messy first draft and try to describe what my puking on the page process looks like.

1. Even though I’m not exactly sure what I want to say I start writing anyway. No outline. No list of key points. Today, there’s not much more than a vague idea that I want to a) use a keyword that starts with B and, b) write about something to do with writing.

2. I write the letter b. Book comes to mind. Yep. That’s how bland things looked when I started out. Boring.

3. Stare out the window.

4. Make tea.

5. Stare at the word book on the screen.

6. Delete all but the b.

7. Realize this is so bad it’s making me want to puke. I don’t have forever to write this. Too bad puke doesn’t start with B. But Barf does! Beautiful!

8. I have a title! And from there, I just begin to spew – everything I can think of to do with heaving stuff onto the page with little regard for how it will all hang together.

9. One thought leads to another. I can’t write fast enough to keep up.

10. Stray words slip into the margin to remind me to come back and explore related thoughts later

11. I write without stopping for perhaps ten or fifteen minutes and the basic content of the post is there.

12. I take a moment to reread. Divide the post into two sections. Expand the bit where I imagine how a more meticulous first drafter might handle this challenge.

13. I take out the terrible vomit joke.

14. And that’s it. A sloppy, kinda stinky not quite right draft.

It’s only then that I sit back and reconsider. Sitting back and reconsidering is immediately part of the revise, rewrite, edit, chew over, regurgitate (to stay with my theme) part of the writing process. At this point, the barfing slows down unless I need to add a fresh chunk to the mix.

What’s the advantage to this method? I always have something to work with. I don’t tend to get stuck. I don’t limit my ideas. I allow my writing to be terrible. I don’t worry that the phrasing isn’t quite right or even if I’ve made my point. That all takes place after I have finished with my initial projectile blathering.

I know that there will be lots and lots of time between spewing out that first draft and the day anyone (even my editor) will get to have a look. I’ll talk about the revision, rewriting process elsewhere (perhaps for the letter R), but what I do know about puking my ideas all over the page is that at least then I have a starting place.

It may be messy and inadequate and confused and incomplete, but it’s somewhere to begin. It’s like having a glorious damp lump of clay sitting on the table in front of me, all bulgy and misshapen. Somewhere inside that lump may be an elegant sculpture waiting for my tools to reveal its hidden form. That’s how the messy first draft feels. Like a voluminous blob of potential

What about you? Are you a spewer like me? Or someone who likes to coax each word, each phrase, each image into being in its most perfect form as you move from sentence to paragraph to chapter to book? Hey – waddya know? Book found its way into this blog post all on its own!

This post is part of the A to Z Blogging Challenge in which bloggers from all over the world write a blog post every day in April. There are a LOT of other bloggers taking part. Visit the A to Z Challenge blog to see who is posting what each day.

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Categories: A to Z Blogging Challenge, Non-fiction, Uncategorized, Works in Progress, Writing, Writing Life

Tagged as: atozchallenge, barf, blogging, books, creative writing, editing, first draft, ideas, Non-fiction, revisions, vomit, work in progress, writing fiction, writing process