Zero Draft, or 5 Steps to Writing the Crappiest First Draft You Can

Z is for Zero Drafts.

This is a new term for me. I'd always called my first drafts "first drafts," but now that I've been introduced to "zero drafts," I like that much, much better.

Having a zero draft like having a hibernating squirrel. Okay, an unusual simile, I admit. But, as your zero draft slumbers like a cute little squirrel (see picture below), your mind gathers thoughts and ideas for it, even when you think you are ignoring it, your mind isn't.

Hibernating Arctic Ground Squirrel.
Photo from Kelly Drew, UAF

A zero draft is a pre-first draft. In other words, it's a draft that you allow to be so crappy that it's not even worth the dignity of being called a first draft. In still other words, it's kind of like that NaNoWriMo novel you have sitting somewhere on your word processor...

But what goes into writing a zero draft? Well, there are several things, and I've taken the liberty of breaking it down into a few steps below which I tend to follow. (These steps are, by no means, set in stone.)

When writing a piece of non-fiction, it's inherent that you'll have to do a lot of research. But what about a piece of fiction? It might come as a surprise, but there can be a lot of research done for a fiction novel as well. Not all authors "write what they know." And, even if they do, most likely, they'll come to a point where they're going to have to Google something or go to the library.

Working with the definition of "a zero draft is a draft an author writes before the first draft," I've outlined the following steps:

Photo Source

STEP 1. Choose your Subject.

STEP 2. Recognize your ignorance on said Subject.

STEP 3. Collect as much research as you care to on Subject.

STEP 4. Select what research will be included in your novel.

STEP 5. Write your zero draft, giving yourself permission to write crap, using everything you want to be included. And sometimes, everything and anything you can think of, just to get yourself through the draft.

What these steps do is allow you to focus your novel around the research you've made. In some ways, this is exactly what NaNoWriMo encourages: a crappy first draft. 

In all honesty, a NaNo draft is often so bad that you cannot consider it a first draft.

As today marks the end of both the A to Z challenge and Camp NaNoWriMo, I'm happy to say that I've "won" both. 

However, as a struggling perfectionist, my NaNo novel is less than pleasing to me. It's so far from what I expected and so far from something I would share with others, that it's reiterated to me just how much of a "zero draft" NaNo novels turn out to be. Some are better than others, and my NaNo 2012 novel was a more complete zero draft than this one has turned out to be. But every novel, like every child, is different. And some take more work than others. (I anticipate a lot of intensive counseling sessions for this Camp NaNo 2013 novel.)

After completing a zero draft, I like to induce hibernation in said draft—especially if I wrote it quickly. (Here is where we return to the squirrel simile/metaphor.)

While your squirrel hibernates, you are subconsciously gathering nuts and berries to feed your characters like some inept, subsistence hunter-gatherer. Most of them are poisonous to your plot, or your theme, or are something your character would never, ever eat. But you keep gathering, hopefully storing them away somewhere you remember to look so that you don't misplace them.

Photo of Spermophilus parryii enjoying a mushroom
 Wikipedia 

Eventually, after a significant hibernation, you return to fatten up your starved zero draft of a novel (see picture above), hoping it still has that cute new squirrel smell when you melt the snow and warm up that tiny squirrel body. 

Now, when you return to it, you see all the fresh opportunities you have, all the things you've stored up for it in your time hibernating. You could feed it a mushroom, a berry, a nut…a seed… 

Now, you have new appreciation for your characters (which you might very well have learned to hate during a NaNo marathon or two), and you have new ideas for fixing those plot holes which are suddenly so evident to you.

There is inherent value in your squirrel-esque hoarding of ideas. 99% of all zero drafts at least deserve for you to return to them and give them a cursory read through in order to see if there's something worth developing. 

A zero draft may be completely tossed out and reworked from the start, or it may be chopped into unrecognizable pieces, but I bet you anything that there is at least one sentence or thought or idea in your zero draft that is worth pursuing. If not for a novel, then a short story or a poem. 

How about you? How do you treat your zero drafts? Do you return to fatten them up? Do you never let them hibernate? Or do you leave them to starve a slow, slow death?

~I.E.

Additional Sources on Zero Drafts:
Write Livelihood
The Writing Wheel
Lisa Harjes
Moody Writing 
Justine Larbalestier

Time

This month I'm participating in the A to Z Blogger's Challenge, found here. Every day of April (except for Sundays), we are posting a blog with the theme of A to Z.

T is for Time.

"More than a half, maybe as much as two-thirds of my life as a writer is rewriting. I wouldn't say I have a talent that's special. It strikes me that I have an unusual kind of stamina."

John Irving 

Everyone has a limited about of time in their life. Some of this goes to responsibilities, some to hobbies. Some to plain ol' fun. It all comes down to how we spend our time.

I don't know about you, but when I waste an entire day watching TV or running around doing errands, I don't feel productive in the slightest. It may have even been a fun day, but it wasn't productive unless I did something worth doing.

We can go through life and have a great deal of "fun," but not end up leaving something behind. As a writer, I want to accomplish something. I want to leave something of my writing behind every single day. So I was thinking about time, and how there's a limited supply of it, but also about what I do with the time I spend writing.

I can break my writing time into three parts: 
1. Planning
2. Writing the First Draft
3. Editing

But where does the majority of my writing time go? 

1. I'm not a huge outliner, so my planning stage tends to be brief, and usually mental (as in, unwritten). However, for the sake of argument, I'll include the mental outlining time in my calculations, because it is time on the novel. I'd say this is maybe 10% of my time.

2. I can type pretty fast, and NaNoWriMo helps me to put a first draft on the pages in about a month, month and a half. I spend from 1-3 hours a day on those days pounding out the first draft words.

3. Personally, like John Irving, I believe two-thirds of my time on a novel is spent editing. 

Allow me to rephrase: at least 66% of my time is spent in the editing phase. Perhaps this goes back to my perfectionism (see post here), and my desire to get every sentence perfect before sharing it with someone. That can be crippling. 

So it leaves me with a dilemma of when to stop. I could spend a lifetime editing and re-editing a novel (and, who knows?, maybe I will). But where's that moment in time when you stop doing good for the novel and start doing harm instead? I wish there were a timer on each of my novels. They would be just like those little plastic pop-up timers on the turkeys you cook every Thanksgiving. When the novel is prime and juicy, ready for consumption, the little red sphere pokes out and says, "Bing! I'm done. Send me on to a publisher, I'm not getting any better than this!" 

Okay, that's a bit unrealistic; let's get back to time. 

I think most of our time working on a novel should be spent in the editing phase. A first draft is crap.

For example, every NaNo month, the NaNo supporters and the NaNo haters pop up with their blogs, either encouraging or discouraging people to try their hand at writing a novel. Both have valid points. 

A first draft is crap. It's inedible swill, it's raw turkey. Maybe half-baked. And consuming it will give you food poisoning. Beginning writers must remember this. It's something that has taken me many years to learn. Looking back at my first novels, ones that I chose not to edit much, I know a first draft is not ready for a reader's eyes.

So the NaNo haters have a point: don't write a first draft and expect it to be awesome. Unless you're willing to do the work editing, you aren't going to make it as a writer. "Everyone has a novel in them," is an oft-quoted bit of encouragement for the wannabe writer. Yes, everyone may have a novel in them, but not everyone has the perseverance to make that novel the best they can make it.

A writer must accept that writing a novel is not just putting the words on the page. Writing a novel is rewriting. And that, my friends, takes times. And it's hard, sweaty work.

"There is no great writing, only great rewriting."Justice Brandeis 

Absolution (A to Z Bloggers' Challenge Day 1)

As of last night, I was uncertain if I was going to undertake both Camp NaNoWriMo and the A to Z Blogger's Challenge for the month of April. But I read a post just this morning of a fellow blogger, Joanne Phillips, doing the A to Z Bloggers' Challenge, and her first post was "Aim high." After that call to arms, how can I not attempt both Camp NaNo and A to Z? 

A IS FOR "Absolution." 

There are several reasons I've chosen absolution to start of this challenge with. With such lofty goals for April ahead of me, I feel absolution is absolutely necessary. Absolution is a "formal release from guilt, obligation, or punishment." (Source: Oxford Online Dictionary.) With that definition in mind, it's only natural for me to absolve myself from guilt and punishment this month of April.

Note that I did not absolve myself from obligation this month. In fact, I've given myself a lot of obligation. For me,  an intermittent blogger at best, I must rise to the challenge of commitment.

However, there are several things that I feel I do need to absolve myself from this month, and forever, really. 

Fear:

This is a big one for me. Not that I am a particularly fearful person, but in terms of sharing my writing, there are several things I do fear. I fear failure, I fear ridicule of others, I fear putting my work out there and being told it's not good enough. I could list a million more things concerning my writing which I fear, but I don't think it's good to focus on the bad. Instead, I want to focus on the fact that I am absolving myself from these fears. I can throw them aside and I refuse to let them control me and my writing. I will take chances and put my work out for others to read. I will pursue paths that I ordinarily wouldn't just to laugh at fear in the face.

Lingering on First Drafts:

Ugh, this is a big one. And a timely one. My first NaNoWriMo taught me a lot about getting the words out on the page. If there's some coal, there's probably a diamond hidden in there somewhere. That is, as long as I have a lot of words (my coal), then there's a chance that I can find the words to keep (the diamonds). But first drafts never live up to my expectations. My first drafts always need a lot of work, and some need more work than others. But NaNo taught me to get the words down and worry about revision later. 

Perfection:

All right. I'm a perfectionist. Not in everything, but in writing, I am undoubtedly a perfectionist. The problem is, that I tend to lend myself to criticism. Oh, all right. I abandon myself to criticism. Perhaps that's why I find critiquing others' work both so rewarding and so hair-tearingly annoying. It's never good enough. That goes for my work and the work of others. The problem with perfectionists is that they hold themselves to such high—often unreasonable—standards, that they tend to hold others to those same unreasonable standards. In other words, it's never, ever good enough. But if you've been at the hand of my critiques, don't despair. I apply the same high standards to myself. No wonder I'm such a compulsive line-editor.

Mistakes:

At first glance, mistakes may seem to be a synonym for perfectionism. But it's not. We all make mistakes. Mistakes can be both deliberate (where you know you aren't doing the right thing and do it anyways) and accidental (where you think you may be doing the right thing, but it turns out you didn't). But the thing about mistakes in writing, is that sometimes, they can be the diamond in the rough. There are times where I've thought I've made a mistake and then returned to the novel to realize that my "mistake" is the one thing that is actually going right in that novel. The other stuff, the path I thought the novel was going down, was the dust, the distraction, and the "mistake" was what I found I absolutely had to pursue. So I hereby absolve myself from making mistakes, in the hopes that I make a few good ones along the way.

So for the month of April (at least), I intend to absolve myself not from obligation, but from fear, lingering on first drafts, perfectionism and making mistakes.

What are some things you resolve to absolve yourself from this April?

Today is the last day to sign up for the A to Z Challenge.

~I.E.