“The first draft of anything is shit”

04Sep08

 - Ernest Hemingway.

When my Writing for Magazines professor handed out print-outs of this quote on the first day of class, I thought it was cute. Oh look, he’s trying to be a tough guy – hip, cool, bold. Sure, I’ll hang up this quote on my wall – remind myself constantly to be a critical writer, or at least make it look like I have that writer “cred.” (No?)

Hell, we all thought it was cute. There are two decorated copies hung in the newspaper office, as if we are all Hemingway devotees, as if we too write and rewrite and rewrite every piece we do. Someone should call us out on being hypocritcal poseurs (although we appreciate a light kick in the pants to maybe make our writing better).

Today it was not cute.

One of our assignments this week was to interview one of our classmates and write a 500-word profile on him or her. Fine. Simple, relatively speaking, as writing is really only simple in its delivery, not its creation. And so we all completed our assignment and handed them in, stapled, on-time, with perfect headers and margins, like good little college students.

“The first draft of anything is shit.”

*Rrrrippp* *Trashed*

“Do it again, give to me on Monday.”

Super.

While this is less than awesome, obviously (a college student’s time is valuable, sir!), the message does reign true. I’m not much of an editor when it comes to my own writing. Kidding myself, I say that with school and life getting in the way I just don’t have time to dedicate myself to my articles enough to write draft after draft. But in reality, I think I fear the process. I know I am good writer, but what if it never gets good enough? I can read an amazing piece and know that it’s amazing, but I am afraid I will never be able to accomplish anything like it. I love those pieces; I don’t want to find out that I can’t do them.

Our professor told us to write as much as we can, more or less. To dedicate time to it like a job, not a hobby. I need – and want – to write more. I want to overcome my fear and get to that point where I’m confident enough that writing is fun. Hence this blog will hopefully see more entries then (yay! right?), but I want even more than that. I’ve thought about attempting some freelance pitches for a while now, again putting it off out of fear – but also because I have no sense of a starting direction. I suppose the best thing to do is just dive in whether or not I know I’m doing it “right.”  So often I think of processes and actions like this as  big secrets that everyone keeps from me, but in the end there appears to be no right way. Everyone “fakes it til they make it.” (Note: stop using cliches).

I’m thinking about starting another blog – one that will be less anonymous (ahh!) - to chronicle my work as it appears and also to comment on articles I read. I’m not sure how I’ll go about formatting that (help? eh? eh?), but if it happens, be on the look out.

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Tags: blog, Ernest Hemingway, shit, Writing