The Benefits of Being Bad

How Terrible First Drafts Can Make You a Better Writer

It took me three attempts to end up with my first completed draft of a novel. Each failed attempt taught me something new about how to write. And I was excited when I finished the novel. So excited that I printed the whole thing off and started reading it.
It sucked.
If I am being honest, there were some great lines. A few nicely conceived scenes. I loved the characters, but the story itself has holes you could swim a whale through. Maybe a couple. In the end, I shelved that novel and some of those characters and scenes proved to be the basis for things that ended up in other novels.
I never focus on how bad this novel is because the important thing is that I learned a lot in this attempt. Lessons that have stuck with me over the years.

Being Bad is Good
When you let yourself be a terrible writer for the sake of finishing that first draft you learn the most important lesson of all. How to finish a first draft.
Awkward prose can be smoothed out. Rough scenes can be polished until they shine. Plot holes can be repaired. However, none of this can happen until that draft has been written.
We can only be good writers by starting out as bad writers. It’s a part of any learning process. You get better through practice, but you need to allow yourself to be a bad writer before you can be a good one.

You Got a Problem with That?
Not even joking here. Some people have a harder time letting themselves be bad for the sake of getting it written that I have encountered a lot of useful tricks over the years. I don’t use any myself
because I’m okay with being bad. Give some of these a try:

• Type in a white font
• Type in a font so small you can’t read it.
• Turn off spell check features
• Never read back on what you wrote
• Type with your eyes closed.
• Tilt your laptop screen to an angle where you can’t see it.
• Write in unerasable pen if you're doing this by hand
• Try using a program like 'Write or Die' or 'Written Kitten' to keep you focused on writing the words instead of the quality of what you're writing.
• Word sprints or wars - engage your competitive bone to focus on writing faster instead of better. 

Got another suggestion? Leave it in the comments and help your fellow writers out. Editing is for later and now is for the writing.

And one last reminder before I let you go back to your draft-

Comparison is the Thief of Words
Don’t compare the words that you have put on the page with the images you have in your mind. Or to your favourite novels. Please, let this draft be bad. Let it be terrible and clunky and cringeworthy. Most importantly, let it exist.