elfs | Shitty first drafts vs. passionate first drafts

Last night, I finished a story. It should be only about 10,000 words long, but it ended up about 17,000. It's the Danjuma story, about a young dopehead with his whole ahead of him "like a thundercloud," to quote Hunter S. Thompson, whose interest in getting high and his queer aversion to "unnatural" methods (arbitrarily defined, just as they are arbitrarily defined in real life) leads him to secretly being one of the few really talented agrobiologists with an interest neuropharmaceuticals in a universe where, really, people who are depressed just use the heavy nanotechnological fix. Neuropharmacology is a lost art, an archaic study, like blacksmithing. Then a mysterious someone sends Dan a puzzling gift, a sentient gift, and Dan is forced to confront his own existence: is his hobby just about finding the best dope with which to self-destruct in the most time-consuming manner possible, or is it a worthy activity in its own right? Does Dan want to continue circling the drain slowly and alone, or can the world tempt him to be part of it? And do his so-called friends really want him to be what he wants to be, or do they just want him to stay with them and supply them with better drugs than what they can get at the local store?

Shortly after finishing it, I stumbled upon Anne Lamott's essay, "Shitty First Drafts," which I have seen contrasted with Annie Dillard's "The Writing Life." Dillard begs the writer to write passionately, to write as if your ass was on fire, to write courageously, yadda yadda yadda. It's a hell of a pep talk. Lamott's essay is much more my style: just write the damn thing.

That latter is kinda what I do. I write the whole story through, from beginning to end, looking for both the conflicts and the connections between characters, and then re-write the real story going on in there, throwing out what doesn't work and, maybe, adding a few things here and there.

The first draft is always important because it is the most passionate, the most "eyes on the fire" ready part of the tale, and I've rarely quite grasped the flame of real passion the second time through.

The other thing that drives me nuts is Dillard's advice to "write the whole thing in one sitting." Yeah, like that's gonna happen. It took me 14 days to get 17,000 words. Now it sits in a drawer for a while to either ferment or rot, and I'll go back to polishing the Zia & Polly story, and when I'm done with that I'll look for more to fix or write.