We all like to be proven right. I’m no exception. So I was tickled when I read about V.A.Howard’s and J.B. Barton’s 1986 analysis of the scientific research related to writing. In Thinking on Paper, the authors concluded that we don’t just record our thoughts when we write. Instead, writing is “the father to thought itself…We do not so much send out thoughts in pursuit of words as use words to pursue our thoughts.”
That’s why writing that sloppy copy during your rough draft phase is so critical. “It’s all in my head,” a writing client will occasionally tell me. Wrong. Your fingers poised over a keyboard or curled around a pen hold the answers to the riddles that inevitably arise when you’re writing a rough draft.
So the next time you’re trying to pursue your thoughts and they seem to be hiding around a corner you can’t even see, start writing a sloppy letter on your computer or legal pad. Then tackle the same subject using whichever modality you didn’t try the first time. That way you’ll engage both parts of your brain on your quest to identify those elusive thoughts.
The bottom line: when you’re writing a rough draft, just go for it.
“The happiest, most productive writers approach their rough drafts as a literary version of Mr. Hyde,” writes Jack Hart in A Writer’s Coach. “They cast civilized restraint aside, letting an uninhibited process of creation carry them quickly through the first version of the story. They don’t stop. They don’t revise. They don’t look back. They push relentlessly forward, guided by their theme statements [or premise] and jot [shorthand] outlines.”
So go forth and scribble with abandon. Your pages will mount up and you’ll have a lot more fun.
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