The First Draft

First drafts are messy and incoherent.

They embody our free-flowing minds, often brimming with cliches and spelling mistakes. And yet, there's a beauty to them.

The sense of accomplishment of finishing your first first draft is a high you'll be riding for a long time. So much so, that you can hardly bring yourself to look back at what you've written for editing.

Writing, like any other form of expression, is a work of art. Sure, there's the skill that gets built over time, allowing people to produce something comprehensible. But art is where you produce a picture of your soul.

The first draft is where you bleed.

Skill doesn't matter here. Instead, the goal is to get your heart to speak to the paper.

Everything you've experienced and everything you've learned in life is bundled up in metaphors and expressed in a story. This is something humans have done for millennia.

We can talk about the technique of writing and about how 90% of first drafts are trash. On the other hand, it's important to remember be yourself in your writing.

That's what art is for.