First Drafts

First drafts of new works mother fucking suck.

There's no way around it.  I dream, as a writer, of that first draft that is ready to make great fortunes and will make me a famous, rich, respected writer.  But that is really a fantasy.  Because no first draft is without flaw.  No script, even in its tenth draft, is without law.  And as much as I would welcome fame, riches and respect I have been writing enough that I know that the privilege to have ideas, to be able to articulate those ideas, and the honor of having more ideas down the pipeline is ample reward.

Now, I haven't always felt this way.  And I certainly DO want to make a living as a writer.  And by a living, I mean a real living.  I mean a living where I can start setting up college funds for my niece and nephews and ensure a healthy, happy and safe old age for my mother.  All of that great material fortune is welcomed by me.

But it's not why I write.  It's not what motivates me to head to the desk every day.  And if I don't get all of that material wealth, I won't stop writing.  It doesn't have that power over me.

I write because I don't understand the world and I want to understand it better.  I write because I have thoughts that need time to be cultivated.  I have big ideas about things that need to be voiced and written down without abandon or filter.  And that is what the first draft is for.  My first drafts tend to be long and messy and marble-mouthed. They do not make sense from beginning to end.  They have some wonderful thoughts and wonderful lines in them.  But they are undercooked.

I have been writing long enough to know that this is what they need to be.

I took part in the Playwrights Union's annual month-long writing challenge.  The challenge is to write a new play in a month.  And I took that challenge to the max.  I wrote 117 pages of new thoughts.  The play I am writing is about a priest and it has nine sermons in it.  So that's probably around 30 pages of straight up monologue.  Plus the scenes in between.  And I wrote a journal along the way that is about 64 pages right now (and counting).

Then I sat in a room with eight other playwrights who had new work and listened to my new play being read.  It was painful in the usual ways.  I know it's not finished.  I know this is not the version of the play that I will be sending out to theaters this Fall with the hope of them giving me the chance to present it at any one of the many summer festivals in 2015.  But I have two months to get it ready for another reading in May.  And four months after that to get it ready for these submissions in the Fall.

I did something I never do during and after my play was read: I didn't beat myself up.  Because I know it's not a polished draft.  I do not expect it to be a polished draft.  And I know that my naivety and my fun with this play is over to a degree.  I now know what it is and what it can be, so the rest of my time will be spent chipping away at the proverbial slab of marble.

First drafts are hard because we want them to be so much more.  But it helped that I was in the room with eight other writers in the same boat.  We all want these plays to be more.  We all were freaking out before the plays were read.  We all know that there's a lot more work to be done.  But we gave each other the thing that we needed (and did get back): unconditional support.

I used to hate other writers' work because I felt it made me better if I was extra judgey.  I didn't do that this year.  And as a result, I think I enjoyed the work more than I would have otherwise.  I honestly heard eight plays that I had an interest in and that I had an attachment to.  Some more than others and all for different reasons.  But I'm going to go to all of the play readings this year and I'm going to enjoy them.  I'm excited about our little grouping of plays and where they're going to go.

It certainly took off edge off of writing and hearing my first draft.

I am grateful that I'm not as much of an asshole as I used to be (at least in my head).
I am grateful that I didn't have to go through this experience alone.
I am grateful that I wrote 117 pages.
I am grateful that I met my own expectations.
I am grateful that I am getting a lot done by not focusing on my goals, but the systems that keep me productive and working every day.