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Get Started In Creative Writing: Leave your writing to cook

by Stephen May

All writing is rewriting. First drafts are usually rubbish, but they are necessary rubbish. The first draft is the equivalent of preparing the ingredients for a tricky recipe. Your first draft is you checking that you have everything you need; it is your peeling and chopping. It is by no means the finished meal.

And, just to pursue this metaphor a little further, writing – unlike food – has the mysterious ability to cook on its own without further intervention from the chef. If you leave your first draft in a drawer a strange thing will happen. The flaws and the consequent changes that you will need to make will become obvious. Somehow, many of the faultlines will show up if you just allow the piece to simmer away unseen.

The worst thing you can do with any writing is to show it to readers too early, before you’ve allowed it to breathe and to show you its weaknesses. The longer you can work with a piece on your own, the longer the love affair with that piece of writing will continue. The moment you let the readers in is the moment it starts to fly from your hands.


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Get Started In Creative Writing: Teach Yourself

Get Started In Creative Writing: Teach Yourself
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