First Draft

“The first draft of anything is shit.”
Ernest Hemingway

Words for any writer to live by. This is my first draft of this blog so perhaps you’ll forgive me if it isn’t up to scratch?

You see I have an idea. It’s a pretty good idea, although all of my ideas seem good at least initially, but I hope you’ll bare with me whilst I have it. I’m a writer. Only I don’t write. 

Or rather I don’t finish. 

I write often. I come up with ideas (and they always seem good at the time) and I write them down. I write through them and I emerge the other side of the idea with. Well to be honest I emerge with shit. Maybe I have a few chapters of it. Or a plan for it. Or the character bios I need for it. 

Sometimes I have all of that and more but at some point the realisation hits. That thought pops up in the back of my mind whilst I’m writing. This stinks! In fact it stinks so much it’s shit!

And so I stop. 

But the urge to write doesn’t stop. If you like me are a writer you know what I mean. That urge is still there. Like a drug itching at the skin of my soul. Sometimes I can go weeks, months even before the itch gets too much but eventually it’s there in my conscious mind. I need my fix. I need to write. 

So I start over. A new idea pops up from the aether that is my unconscious and I begin the cycle again. 

If you’ve somehow stumbled on this blog by some guy no ones ever heard of then I’m sure you understand the cycle. After all if you didn’t recognise what I’m describing why are you still reading? 

I recognise in myself the cycle of the failed writer. And I want to break that cycle. It occurs to me that I can do this one of two ways. 

I can stop writing altogether, the thought of this fills me with a strange dread. I think it would be easier to stop breathing. 

Option two it is then. I break the cycle by becoming a successful writer. How do I succed as a writer? Well for me it’s simple. 

Just Write The Damned Book!

I measure my failure in terms of books not written. I’ll measure my success in terms of books written. 

This is my first draft. Not of the book I’m going to write but of my experience of writing that book. It’s my hope that publicly recording my rehabilitation will not only help me stay on the path but also help others in their struggles with the addiction of not finishing. 

Maybe together we can finish what we started apart?