Comment by herbertl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by herbertl | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad the notion of the shitty first draft has grown more popular. For me, I believe I heard it from Anne Lamott–which is basically that first drafts should be expected to suck. I heard it when I was relatively young, so it seeped in. It really gave me permission to let go of expectations, results, hope, despair, etc. and just write.

Frankly I don't know if it actually makes things more "effective" per se—the editing phase is the most difficult for me. I've collected some tricks to edit my own work (e.g., read out loud, change the font, triple space and print on paper, etc...) and also enlist the help of a friend, a peer, or a freelance editor. But this is where the doubts I had let go of come boomeranging back. By then though, the idea is usually strong enough for me to make a case for it and to keep refining. (If it's not I'll just shelf it and start on a different draft.)

I feel like Tarantino is the perfect example of the shitty first draft. His older films were just...tight, for lack of a better word. They were dense, every second was relevant.

With the loss of his editor and his name recognition letting him get away with anything, his later films are what happens when artists ship a shitty first draft instead of putting in the work to refine it.

The same happens with books. I happen to like both versions of Stephen King's _The Stand_ — the one first published, cut down to a reasonable size at his editor's insistence, and the one he published later, representing his original vision. But I honestly have to say that the shorter version is just as good as the longer one, so I tend to side with the editor here.

And Neal Stephenson's newer books seem to lack an editor to tell him they could do with somewhat tighter writing.

Cranking out a mediocre first draft and then revising it can be a very effective process, provided you don't get overly attached to that first draft.

Oh god Stephenson, he'd have made a much better example for published first drafts, but he's been doing this his whole career. Even the Big U and Zodiac, which I love, could both benefit from some serious editorial review.

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