Get It All Down

I’m writing constructing another novella.

This one on the history of Port Phillip as told by research into a sea monster.

It’s fun. It’s not literature. It’s not even great story telling. But I’m having fun.

It’s also so easy to think and rethink every little thing without making forward progress. Progress in the form of pages and chapters. Work product. Not meta work product.

I must remind myself to get down the first draft as fast as possible.

A whole complete thing from beginning to end. The lot.

Now that I can see the whole thing, what it could be, I MUST get it down.

All of it. Every bit of it. Throw it all in.

Of course it’s too much. Of course it’s bad. It sucks.

But the idea as conceived is pretty good fun.

We can clip and polish and iterate later.

But without getting it all down, we’ll have nothing to refine.

Steven Pressfield, in his various great books on writing reminds us often.

From Do the Work:

“Get to THE END as if the devil himself were breathing down your neck and poking you in the butt with his pitchfork. Believe me, he is.

Get to the end.

Get it all down.

Don’t stop until there is a complete piece.

Then you can edit. Then you can rewrite. Then you can restructure. Then you can make something good.