Tomorrow I’ll be in converastion with Kate Weinberg, author of The Truants! Our event will be hosted by Murder by the Book, and you can find info on how to tune in here.
I catch Adam on the phone on a Monday morning, which seems like an inauspicious time to ring up a rock and roller (his manager’s suggestion, not mine). But to call Adam Weiner a rock and roller feels reductive; after an hour on the horn we’ve talked about everything and everyone from the GOP and …
New interview with Low Cut Connie up on Vinyl District! We had a fascinating conversation about performance and politics and art of all kinds and I hope you’ll give it a read.
Hey groundlings! Need something to liven up your Saturday? I’ll be talking Shakespeare, Villains, and all things literary on the Dallas Public Library podcast! Please join, share, and bring your burning questions.
The shock of the new
will prepare its own unveiling
in old and brutal ways.
Dionysos does not
explain or regret
anything. He is
pleased
if he can cause you to perform,
despite your plan,
despite your politics,
despite your neuroses,
despite even your Dionysian theories of self,
something quite previous,
the desire
before the desire,
the lick of beginning to know you don’t know.
If life is a stage,
that is the show.
Exit Dionysos.
— Anne Carson, “i wish i were two dogs then i could play with me (translator’s note on Euripides’ Bakkhai)
If it’s any consolation, the first draft of Villains would be unrecognizable and not worth reading. First drafts aren’t the “original” or like director’s cuts where the artist is just working freely without an editor. Instead they’re first clumsy attempts to get the story down on paper and in my experience they are always, without fail, a mess. The process of revising that messy first draft is how you really make a book, and most authors (I’m speaking for myself but guessing for others) would be probably feel somewhat violated to have their shitty first drafts read by anybody but themselves, because that’s antithetical to what a first draft is. It’s a safe space where you can expermient and make mistakes and find the crude shape of the thing without the Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known inhibiting your creative impulses. Without that safe space to work in, most writers couldn’t write anything at all.
Here’s the other thing: the process of revision is so complicated and convoluted (especially for traditionally published books which have been worked on not only by one person but by a whole host of other people at the imprint) that to compare a first draft to a final draft would be a bit of a fool’s errand. For instance, we did 45 different drafts of Villains before we got to our production draft, and I can’t even remember or make sense of all the changes we went through to get there. For an outside reader to look at the two side-by-side would be woefully unhelpful, because it would be impossible to reconstruct the process without the 44 drafts and thousands of emails and phone calls and Track Changes conversations that happened in between. But (here’s the important part) by the time we got there, it didn’t feel 45 drafts removed from my “original” intention. It felt like 45 drafts was how long it took to effectively express the intention that was there from the start. I like this quote from @veschwab on the subject:
However, this should still be motivating! Not just for your first draft, but for every draft that comes after–and trust me, working through 45 drafts of the same damn book trying to get it right is when you really need motivation. So here it is: all of your favorite books were once a steaming pile of crap, so in the likely event your first draft is also a steaming pile of crap, that’s okay! That’s normal. That’s a necessary part of the process, and if you put the work in to make it better, someday you too will have a first draft you cringe just thinking about and a 45th draft (or something like it) of something you can be proud of. As a caveat, a writer’s work is never done and if you’re anything like me you will find your early work cringeworthy even after 45 drafts and five years’ temporal distance, but that’s a necessary part of your growth as a writer, too.
Does anybody else really wish they could read first drafts written by their favourite authors? Like, for one, it would be SUPER interesting to see the “original” version of my favourite books. But also, it could be so motivating to see that their first drafts aren’t perfect, you know?
I would pay good money for a first draft of any Tana French book! Or for If We Were Villains’ or My Dark Vanessa’s first version!
Tl;dr First drafts are best left unread, but all aspiring authors should cherish the stumbling blocks of the creative process, because they are also learning experiences. Without a shitty first draft you can’t have a 45th good one.
@m-l-rio Let me preface this by saying that I never expected you to even find this post, let alone reply, and am now quite intimidated in trying to formulate my response. I was expecting my post to get the roughly 3 to 5 notes that my posts usually generate, which is why I honestly didn’t expect you to see it. I purposefully did not tag you in it or anything, but then again, I talked about your book and used a tag for the book, so this is on me. It should have been clearer to me that you could find this post and reply and that maybe the chance of that happening was somewhere above zero percent. With that out of the way: Thank you for taking the time to reply!! Apart from being somewhat intimated, I am also very excited!
Now, on to the topic we’re discussing: Before you replied, I said to another user (and you likely saw it) that “I have a fairly strong feeling that M would never want to share that first draft”. I can see now that I was right and that your position on this is really similar to what I had expected. It’s important to me to say that I was speaking hypothetically! I definitely understand everything you’ve said about a first draft being private and that it could only ever be created in a sort of “safe space” where the writer knows that nobody except themselves is ever going to see it (unless they want them to, which, more likely than not, they don’t). Of course, I wouldn’t ever want ANY writer, least of all my favourite writers, to feel violated due to their first drafts somehow being shared.
That being said, I still think that getting a glimpse at early versions of a story would be interesting (as a fan) and instructional (as an amateur writer), but based on what you said, I would like to modify my post a bit to say that being involved in any part of the revision process would be even better! Again, I understand that these things are not meant for the public, and I think I am even mostly (or entirely) happy with that as a fan! Because as a fan, I am very thankful to be handed a book as a final product, revised, rewritten and edited as many times as necessary. But as an amateur writer, I think any look at comments from editors and changes from one draft to another (say from draft 36 to 37, for example) would be super intriguing and definitely instructive!
Now, once again, I understand that this “inside look” will probably never be possible for an outsider and I understand the reasons behind this. So yes, my wish and my thinking-about-this-and-wondering-about-this remain, but as I said before, I know that it’s a complete hypothetical.
Finally, your words seem to have inspired many people and I want to say that they have inspired me, too! It is great to be reminded of how much work actually goes into any of our favourite books and that the first drafts of those stories were in all likelihood extremely far away from the polished, beautiful version we got in the end.
Again, thank you so much for your reply!
Hi @sophielovesbooks! Just wanted to take a minute to respond, and wanted to start by saying that my reply wasn’t intended to scold you at all, so I hope it didn’t come off that way (though I absolutely sympathize with how difficult it is to parse tone on the internet). One of the parts of the writing/publishing I find most frustrating is the lack of transparency which renders the whole industry so mysterious to newcomers, so I’ve always tried to share what meager insider knowledge I do have. Leveling the playing field is long overdue in this business, and this was only intended to as an honest truth that you really aren’t missing much in those early drafts. Revision, especially with multiple people involved, is so idiosyncratic as to be almost illegible.
However, I do think it’s helpful to talk about how amorphous and confusing the revision process is. Far too often we tell young writers they need to do things (like revise) without giving them any idea what that actually looks like or how to learn to do it. This is especially true of long-form fiction, for which learning opportunities are very rare. Even in my creative writing minor, I never got to write (or revise) anything longer than 30 pages, and a 400-page novel is a vastly different undertaking. But how the hell are you supposed to learn to do it without guidance? It’s an excellent question. First, though, I think it’s crucial to acknowledge how difficult something like revision is–which is why I’m always talking about those 45 drafts and how much work it took to get there. We set young writers up for failure by acting like revision is something they should just intuitively know how to do, so dismantling that myth and being patient with yourself is Step 1. But if trying to reconstruct someone else’s revision process isn’t the best way to learn, what’s Step 2?
Like many things in writing, the best way to improve is to practice. You’ll get better at revision with each draft you revise, not only because you’re sharpening your critical eye, but because you’re learning more about yourself as an artist as you go. (This is partly why trying to decipher someone else’s revisions is sort of fruitless–they’re going to have different strengths and weaknesses than you do, to say nothing of style.) That said, how do you know where to start? I think looking to writers you admire is absolutely the right instinct, but instead of wondering about their old drafts, consider what they have to say about the craft. Check their writing books, websites, blogs, Twitter feeds, whatever. Most of them will be talking about their work in some capacity, and if you’re familiar with their work, that can be really instructive. To use myself as an example (simply because it’s easiest), I talk about different parts of the revision process in long-form posts on my website, in (usually) shorter posts here, and also as part of a series of daily revision notes I started doing because I didn’t see anyone else doing it and followers seemed to find it helpful. (I’ve even toyed with revising the opening pages of the published version of Villains just to give people a sense of how much more work it still needs; a writer’s work is never done, just due.) This is just to say, those glimpses into the revision process are out there, and probably in a format that’s going to be more helpful than a pile of old drafts.
Here’s the last thing and maybe the most important: artists who are wary about sharing their work are often pretty game to talk about their work, so if you have questions, ask! I can only speak for me, but my inbox is always open, and I’m always game for a chat about craft. The same is probably true of other authors you follow, so send an ask or a Tweet or raise your hand at a talk–you’ve got nothing to lose. More experienced writers are a great resource, and they’ll be able to put their revision work in context that’s legible in a way an old first draft probably wouldn’t be. You never know what kind of wisdom you might shake loose if you bark up the right tree.
At any rate, this is just a long way of saying, revision is hard, and those elusive first drafts might not be that useful, but there are a lot of great resources out there that might help bridge that gap.
Does anybody else really wish they could read first drafts written by their favourite authors? Like, for one, it would be SUPER interesting to see the “original” version of my favourite books. But also, it could be so motivating to see that their first drafts aren’t perfect, you know?
I would pay good money for a first draft of any Tana French book! Or for If We Were Villains’ or My Dark Vanessa’s first version!
If it’s any consolation, the first draft of Villains would be unrecognizable and not worth reading. First drafts aren’t the “original” or like director’s cuts where the artist is just working freely without an editor. Instead they’re first clumsy attempts to get the story down on paper and in my experience they are always, without fail, a mess. The process of revising that messy first draft is how you really make a book, and most authors (I’m speaking for myself but guessing for others) would be probably feel somewhat violated to have their shitty first drafts read by anybody but themselves, because that’s antithetical to what a first draft is. It’s a safe space where you can expermient and make mistakes and find the crude shape of the thing without the Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known inhibiting your creative impulses. Without that safe space to work in, most writers couldn’t write anything at all.
Here’s the other thing: the process of revision is so complicated and convoluted (especially for traditionally published books which have been worked on not only by one person but by a whole host of other people at the imprint) that to compare a first draft to a final draft would be a bit of a fool’s errand. For instance, we did 45 different drafts of Villains before we got to our production draft, and I can’t even remember or make sense of all the changes we went through to get there. For an outside reader to look at the two side-by-side would be woefully unhelpful, because it would be impossible to reconstruct the process without the 44 drafts and thousands of emails and phone calls and Track Changes conversations that happened in between. But (here’s the important part) by the time we got there, it didn’t feel 45 drafts removed from my “original” intention. It felt like 45 drafts was how long it took to effectively express the intention that was there from the start. I like this quote from @veschwab on the subject:
However, this should still be motivating! Not just for your first draft, but for every draft that comes after–and trust me, working through 45 drafts of the same damn book trying to get it right is when you really need motivation. So here it is: all of your favorite books were once a steaming pile of crap, so in the likely event your first draft is also a steaming pile of crap, that’s okay! That’s normal. That’s a necessary part of the process, and if you put the work in to make it better, someday you too will have a first draft you cringe just thinking about and a 45th draft (or something like it) of something you can be proud of. As a caveat, a writer’s work is never done and if you’re anything like me you will find your early work cringeworthy even after 45 drafts and five years’ temporal distance, but that’s a necessary part of your growth as a writer, too.
Tl;dr First drafts are best left unread, but all aspiring authors should cherish the stumbling blocks of the creative process, because they are also learning experiences. Without a shitty first draft you can’t have a 45th good one.
