[Tipster] You're Never Really Done with the Draft You're Working on

Beloved and often profane writer Anne Lamott gave us three words that helped us all start writing and overcome our insecurities:

   Shitty First Draft (SFD)

The idea is this: Just start writing.

Don't worry about laying down something beautiful or perfect. Just write. Work on crafting your ideas later.

Thank you, Anne Lamott.

She helped me make thousands of miles of progress by simply getting me to burp out some initial ideas.

But, But, But ...

The harder part of writing for me is the "crafting" phase. Once the SFD has been written, then it's time to rewrite.

And rewrite.

Rewriting is crafting. And crafting is rewriting.

And rewriting.

And opening up the file for the 397th time and changing a verb.

And then deleting a sentence.

Or deleting an entire section and then moving the section to a later chapter (if you're writing a book).

You should feel insecure about your SFD. It's not good.

In fact, it smells.

It's the rewriting that will shape it into something worthy of your readers.

Still Need to Ship Your Work

I recently worked on an article for an online business journal. I must have had 467 drafts.

Then I sent it to the editors for their review.

They had some recommendations for changes.

I revised it.

And then I went into another tweaking phase.

I made more changes. Maybe another five or six drafts.

By "draft," I mean, "I opened up the file and made some changes."

What Anne didn't fully communicate was the work of CRAFTING the SFD.

Ship Your Work

And yet, you must ship your work. You must send what you believe is a final draft to the editor.

Push "publish" on your blog. Get it out there.

At this point, you will still want to make changes. That's okay.

Ship it anyway.

You will never feel 100% about the final draft.

Now, buckle up and write the first draft (SFD) of your next piece of writing.