the trick is that there is no trick
or, how i finally understood what it means to write a zero draft
Hi friends šµšæ
In November 2014, I moved to London to help set up the EMEA office for the tech start-up I worked for. It was my first time ever in Europe. Living in London seemed very glamorous, and various friends said I was lucky. Truthfully, the circumstances of why I had to go were quite painful at the time. Iād use any excuse to visit London now, but my first six months there I was often exhausted and lonely. Given the season, workload, and my own work tendencies, it was always dark by the time I left the office.Ā Iād walk home feeling melancholy about all the people clustered outside pubs; besides my boss and my one coworker (who is now one of my dearest friends!) I knew no one when I arrived.
I remember things improving once Daylight Savings hit. Suddenly I could catch a bit of sun in the evenings. Coming from California and Manila, I hadnāt realized what an effect the lack of sunlight had on my mood. I found a tai chi class I liked. I made friendsāsome by cold emailing, others through friends of friends, still others through meet-upsāand we eventually hired some awesome people to expand the business. I discovered the magic of Covent Garden and free museums and halloumi cheese and cheap same-day West End tickets. And I was writing.
I wasnāt writing regularly by any stretch. I was often too tired after work, and since I was only in the UK for a limited time I saved some weekends specifically for travelāafter the six-month mark, once I wasnāt the only one fielding support calls. But there were weekends when Iād stay in, and though Iād often visit a museum or park or see friends, I also remember settling down at various cafes with my laptop. Iād typically arrive at lunchtime, and get a ham-and-cheese croissant and a latte. After, Iād order a pot of tea, and sometimes a traybake, and stay till dinnertime.
Iām pretty sure this was from the Timberyard cafe in Covent Garden.
In doing this I managed to finish drafting a novella in 2015. It was 33k words long. Just get to the end of the draft, I told myself. Itās okay if itās a total mess, just finish it! Thinking this way, I charged on, hating every word of the last few sections, until I reached something that could ostensibly be called an ending.
That piece has a lot of sentences I like. Iāve carried the characters in my heart for years. Itās a story I care a lot about; I know why I want to tell it. And yet, for all that I love this story, I was so disappointed in that draft that nearly five years passed before I felt ready to give it another real go.
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I tend to write clean first drafts.
I feel like itās taboo to say this because it sounds like bragging, but the whole point of me sharing this is (a) there are people who write clean first drafts, though the internet has convinced me this is very rare; (b) this can have significant drawbacks.
My clean-draft-tendencies are changing now, but in the past itās mostly held true. Let me explain. Iāve primarily been a short story writer. This is true for my original writing, but even in the decade when 90% of my writing was fanfic, I was very much a oneshot fic author. When I wrote stories, I rarely knew what would happen in them (classic pantser?), but trusted that my process/subconscious/story-sense would work things out. And for the most part, they did. The stories came out right-shaped. While drafting, magically, a āturnā or solution would appear. Of course, upon finishing, Iād need a couple of sentence passes, but line editing is mostly enjoyable for me. When I finished a fanfic, Iād go over it 3-4 times in 1-2 days, improving my sentences but not otherwise changing muchā¦then Iād post it immediately.
I did the same with several early short stories. First drafts are often agony. I go through a lot of false startsāopening scenes or sentences that simply donāt work. But once I properly get going the story is usually written as-it-should-be. If I turn in a short story to a workshop, most likely Iāve line-edited it several times, but the story itself hasnāt changed significantly from when it first transmuted from brain-images to actual words.
Of course, this all worked fine when I was operating in a form I had practiced more than a hundred times: the short story.
I saw the limits of this approach when I started writing longer things. Anything above 15k words did not come out the right shape at all. It flopped around. It lost steam. It grew accursedly boring in sections. All the nice sentences could not save something that didnāt make inherent story-sense.
Still, the standing advice was to get to the end of a shitty draft. Once you have a draft, you have something to work with. Itās not even a first draft! Call it a zero draft!
I zero drafted that novella. It was broken. I reread it once, twice. The broken-ness did not go away. The magic turn did not occur to me. The story did not reveal itself to me. And my subconscious had no idea how to deal with this.
It doesnāt work! What do I do with a story that simply does. not. work?
The answer: revise it. I knew this, mechanically, but my clean-first-drafter self didnāt really understand what that meant until I made a desperate phone call in late 2019.
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That doesnāt mean I didnāt try to do stuff with that story between 2015 and 2019.
A list of things I tried:
Rereading the whole thing, taking copious notes on everything wrong with it that I need to change, fix, or solve.
Writing a lot of ideas about what to change, fix, or solve.
Sitting paralyzed with these ideas because there are too many things to change, fix, or solve.
Somehow convincing myself that the way to resolve this is to learn the three-act structure and shoehorn my story into that.
Reading up on three-act structures and twisting myself into knots making the story more action-oriented and plot-heavy.
Attending a summer workshop geared towards novelists to see if the workshop might hold The Key to Writing a Novel Draft.
Changing the POV character to be the one with clearer stakes and more āforward motion,ā and writing three chapters in that new POV plus a summary for workshop.
Getting confused because my workshop seemed to validate that I had the right POV character, and yes this did look like a plotā¦but my heart wasnāt in it. In some ways it was still clinging to the old draft.
Reading Lisa Cronās Story Genius and trying hard to find the ālive wireā for my characters.
Beating up myself up for being unable to revise it.
Ignoring this story by getting excited about several other shiny ideas that arenāt secondary world fantasy. (Iām still doing this.)
I was overwhelmed by everything I needed to fix. I thought someone out there must have a magic bullet for me and this story. Yet over and over again, in workshops and writing articles and direct advice from writers, the answer seemed to be: āJust write it. Youāll figure it out as you write it. Thereās no trick to this but writing.ā
But Iād done what they asked! Iād written that draft, and yet the story lay limp and dead in my hands. What was I missing? And why couldnāt I do it?
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Last December, in a sudden spasm of panic, I reached out to one of my writing mentors. Iād studied with Karen Joy Fowler at Clarion in 2013. We work together as part of the Clarion Foundation Board, but I rarely go to my teachers for advice. (I have a tendency not to ask for help, and I talk a lot about writing problems with peersā¦but hey, can I be blamed for being shy about reaching out to Karen Joy Fowler?)
During the two weeks Karen taught us at Clarion, I felt that our writing process and viewpoints were somewhat similar, so I thought she might be able to help. I emailed her with a vague ācan I ask about writing things,ā and we set up a time to chat.
In describing my dilemma to Karen, I verbalized it this way for the first timeāto her, but also to myself: āI think finishing that zero draft traumatized me a little, with writing long things.ā
Karen patiently listened as I rambled about what happened. She proceeded to give me a lot of great advice.
Then she said: āYouāve been really traumatized with that draft! You believed that you would solve these problems as you write it. Iām not persuaded that itās not happening, that you arenāt figuring it out.ā
Oh. I canāt describe to you what a gift that was. To be told: dude, what youāre doing IS writing. That creating the zero draft was, in fact, the process. That I hadnāt solved everything, but I had solved some of itā¦and the only way forward was to write it again. And Iād solve a bit more that way.
(I canāt tell you why it was those words, finally, rather than everything else Iād heard until that point, which dislodged the block in my brain. Sometimes you just need to hear something in tens of different ways before it lands right.)
Everything awful about the process of writing that crappy draft was justā¦writing. Even the draft being broken when I finished it was writing. Unconsciously, I had put off writing a new draft because I didnāt want to spend all that time only to end up with a ābroken productā once more. I did all kinds of thingsāpre-writing, ruminating on problems, plotting, outliningāso that I āwouldnāt have to go through that again.ā I wanted to solve all the writing problems outside of the actual writing. I wanted to get everything right before diving in again.
This was what people meant when they said there is no trick to it.
I had to embrace the idea of revisions as going at it once more, at the pure level of the story. The story may not be right-shaped at the end of that draft. I might get it wrong again; I might have to write the whole thing from scratch, ten more times, twenty more. And not line edits, but really chunky changes.
It was a wake-up call for my clean-draft brain. Iād been slowly inching to this answer over the years, as I wrote novelettes and (shorter!) novellas that required way more surgery upon finishing.
Thereās no magic to this process. You only write, and write again, and write more. You take whatever youād discovered last time. Maybe you even hope itāll work out this time. But you steel your fragile heart against the very real possibility that it wonāt; likely thereāll be several battles yet.
And thatās okay. Thatās just writing.
I donāt hate or begrudge the zero draft anymore. Itās not an easy idea to swallow, but what can I do? If anything, itās good for me to recognize the limitations of my old processes and try to find new ways forward.
This past year, I blew dust off that old story and reread it with fresh, undemanding eyes. I noted the bits I liked, made comments on everything that occurred to me, and realized: this isnāt great, but itās not unsalvageable either. Iām going to write the next draft using the best parts of this one. Then Iām going to write the draft after that using what Iāve learned from its predecessors. So it goes.
Hereās most of this same story in abbreviated Twitter form, but with bonus advice from Karen:
Events and things!
Iām doing a reading with the Sturgis Library this summer, July 21st at 7 PM EST online. To get the link, please email Corey at sturgisreference@comcast.net. Iād love to see some of you there, if the timing makes sense!
This summer I am also participating in the Clarion Write-a-thon, which is our annual summer fundraiser. I have a goal to write 25,000 words by August 1 (yikes!). If youād like to support me or pledge against my wordcount (itās kinda like a walkathon, except the writing equivalent), visit my author page here. Your support means a lot to me!
Finally, the Clarion Workshop is continuing its summer conversation series. Register for our upcoming events on our website!
Hereās another ham-and-cheese croissant. I love this typeāwhen itās squashed. They do it in the UK, but so rarely in the US. Baristas give me funny looks here when I request that they squish my croissants in the panini press.
Thanks as always for reading and being here. If you liked this post, feel free to share it with others, or sign up if you havenāt yet. If you have any thoughts on zero drafts and how theyāve worked for you, leave a comment below or hit me up atĀ yap.isabel@gmail.com.