Macho Writer's Mantra: Real Writers Write First Drafts

Ever needed the validation that you are indeed a writer?  Well-p, in this post I'm going to give you a simple test that will definitively prove if you're a true writer or not.  This isn't a test for the weak, the squeamish.  You gotta have guts and be tough to be a writer.  I'm talkin' Stallone in "Rambo" (1985) tough.  You need to be able to prove in a tangible way that you can do the toughest thing in writerdom.  And that is the Herculean task of being able to write an original first draft.  Can you write an first draft of a story from elements that you, yourself create?

Real Writers Write First Drafts

What does completing a first draft mean?  You fuckin' serious?  Writing a first draft means EVERYTHING!  The ability create a fully formed story out of what previously there was nothing cannot be overstated.  It is imperative.  This proven abilty seperates the real writers from the posers.  The proven ability to write original stories as represented in the completed first draft stage is the single-most important, demonstrated ability a writer can have.  YES, it's that important!

Polishing a story beyond a first draft is a needed skill to make a story marketable.  BUT it is NOT the most important skill a person needs to be a writer.  The proven ability to be able to make something up out of nothing trumps editing skills.

YES, may successful writers of today do not need to write first drafts.  In fact many writers today just make a living by improving other people's previous drafts.  This is a form of "gravy sucking": someone else has done the hard part of creating something out of nothing, and you are merely adding to the existing foundation that already been laid.

Point: those who create the first draft are be lauded MORE than those who work off a first draft and attempt to polish and make it better.

Another macho point to consider.  Those who can create a first draft are greater than the dreamers who just sit around and think stuff up.  "Writing" is an action word, it means something tangible is be put down on the page.  "Dreaming" is freewheeling and illusive.  Like a cloud up in the sky.  Beautiful but fleeting and leaving no long term affect.  THAT'S why writing trumps dreaming.  Writing is the pysical proof that those dreams can be allayed in story from. 

Being a good dreamer is an essential trait of a good writer, but it is not the endall.  Because if you can never put all those dreams together in a tangible story form, after time, those dreams become lost.   A beautiful cloud that simply drifts away...

Right now in my writing life, I'm working at improving an original story that I crafted, my sequel to, "The Commune" which I wrote in 2009/2010.  I find it's very easy to write additional drafts ONCE you have a first draft in hand.  And that's why I treasure the ability to write first drafts so much -- because it's the hardest thing involved in the writing process.  Hence my macho mantra:

Real Writers Write First Drafts

Gravy suckers leach off other people's work or ideas.  Real writers, those with true skill, have the abilty to start with a blank page, fill it with idea and concepts that entertain in a organized manner; a story. 

There are many skills necessary to be a good writer:

1. You need to have wit.  A personalized style of writing that works.  A lot of people call this, your "writer's voice".
2. You have to have some imagination.  Show the world something different that they haven't seen before.  Are you unique, or a hack a clone of some other writer or celebrity? 
3. You have to have endurance.  Be able to survive the lean times when things get tough.  You have to have some grit, and be able to stick it out even when you don't have all the answers.
4. You have to finish.  Writers finish what they start.  They don't go half way then throw in the towel.  Real writers finish at least a first draft.  They are not merely daydreamer who think shit up, then just leave it there to rot on the tree.  They prick that fruit and make into a pie, which is a writing analogy of it's own.
5. You experiment with sentences and try to be poetic.  A lot of writer are very good at this.  This a needed aspect of the editing and polishing phase of the writing.  It is the frosting on the cake, NOT the cake itself. 

As you probably know by now, E.C. Henry is pretentious as all fuck.  Macho, yes, but not macho as in Village People macho.   I like my macho minus the holiday fruitcake -- if you catch my drift.  BUT within the realm of being a writerdom I do have humility.  I find writing very humbling.  Oftentimes it highlights my deficiencies.  No, I don't think everything I write comes out pure gold.  It a lot of hard work to write something memorable.  But over the years I've found that there are definite stages of bringing a story from the idea stage all the way throught to the final polish stage.

And over those years, I've also found that NOTHING is as hard as completing that first draft.  Yes, polishing and final line editing can be a grueling, time consuming task, BUT the hardest work has already been done.  Getting that initial construct is imperative.  A good, first draft trumps dreaming about story and story ideas.  And a good first draft trumps the editing and final polishing of a story.

Wanna prove to the world that you are indeed a writer?  Easy, go into the ring once.  Go toe-to-toe with the blank page, and come out a winner with a first draft in hand.  Do that you're on the proverbial same winner's circle as Stallone when he took out Clubber Lang (Mr. T) in "Rocky III" (1982).  Be a wussy "gravy sucker" and avoid the first draft and voila, you're like a proverbial Pee Wee Herman.  And who wants that?  What chick in her right mind would chose Pee Wee Herman over Rocky Balboa? 

Point: be Stallone not a Herman.  Face what you fear the most -- and finish that pesky, first draft!