I know I’ve written about this before, but I love revisiting this concept of shitty first drafts. Anne Lamott introduced it in her book, “Bird by Bird”, an excellent guide to writing that I’ve read at least twice. The problem that I encountered with this first draft was sheer frustration that I wanted to write something meaningful and beautiful, but turds kept coming out no matter how I tried to edit the piece. The second draft was getting better. Initially, it sounded great. I trudged along, knowing my writing was a work in progress and would need severe editing, but it didn’t matter because I was churning paragraph after paragraph. When I would finish the piece, I would go back and edit those sections. And then, nearly finished with the piece, I start ranting about the discomfort of this week’s events again. It was supposed to be about networking, which quickly turned into how to build meaningful relationships, which quickly turned into why a personal relationship of mine went south.
This excerpt is from my newsletter, On Discomfort