I’m taking the above quote as excellent advice for anyone writing anything, especially anything in long form, i.e., novel, non-fiction, stage play, screenplay, or memoir.
Even horror stories like THE CLIFFSIDE CHRONICLES.
Being halfway down the wrong road doesn’t make it the right road, but some writers press on regardless. Very often, they fall in love with the volume of material generated, and junking substantial parts even if they don’t serve the whole or aren’t true in the artistic sense becomes almost painful. If an author is wildly popular, even their puke draft can make it into print. The publisher usually calls those “unexpurgated, “unabridged,” or “special” editions.
In writing as in travel, it IS the destination that counts. Ultimately. And while in writing and traveling the shortest distance between the beginning and end is a straight line, the writer-traveler often learns or encounters more wonderful things on an indirect route. And that includes wrong turns. And not for nuthin’, us writers are travelers in a way. We just work at taking others along for the ride.
Regarding “missteps” in writing, I tend to charge right through the initial draft of project, leaving questionable choices (“mistakes”) intact as I proceed. I revisit why I included the mistake in the first place, and leaving it in situ forces me to reckon with my own thinking, concept, and/or original idea. Sometimes, some aspect can be salvaged, or something clunky sanded down. Why did I want this character to say this? Why did I imagine that character doing this?
That said, I am near the end of what I call the “puke draft” in another project, a stage play called THE GADGET, about J. Robert Oppenheimer coming to grips with his legacy on the eve of setting off the first atomic bomb. “Puke draft” is a term that describes the phase of writing that is essentially a brute-force matter of getting everything down on “paper” based on whatever outlining method I decide to use, including placeholders for whole scenes and dialogue – without stopping, rethinking, judging, revising, rewriting, or editing (except for fixes to grammar and usage).
It’s a matter of literally just vomiting up all the ideas you have into a “container” of sorts, a virtual equivalent of the Green Giant Niblets trash can that I got in 7th Grade that saw plenty of beer throw-up by the time senior year rolled around. You fill the container with everything, knowing that you’re going to clean up the dross later. Cleaning up writing entails adding, deleting, expanding, compressing, revising, and reorganizing.
Even though THE GADGET is a stage play, the puke-and-cleanup process is relevant to any kind of writing.
So I’m done puking up the bulk of both acts of THE GADGET. Yes, BOTH. As I might have expected based on the material (Oppenheimer, the Trinity test, and the beginning of the Atomic Age), it’s become a two-act instead of a one-act. It’s laughable that I thought I could get away with one. But that error in planning and structure was exposed by the puke-draft.
Once the puke draft of any writing project is finished, I usually let it rest for a couple of days, before moving on to the more exacting second phase (which entails all of the aforementioned activities, including facing those “what the hell was I thinking?” questions; and, more importantly from an instructive angle, why did I think what the hell I was thinking? And is what I was thinking valuable, just in needed of being clarified and refined?).
If I’m lucky, I will only have a third and final phase to complete the project.
And, most importantly in writing for the stage, “ready” is not to be confused for “finished.” Ready means ready to hand off for pre-production, which is a whole other part of the creative process particular to both stage and screen scripts.
A stage play absolutely requires that the text be read aloud and blocked and acted to some degree before the text can be finalized. The initial writing – a solitary act – is what I call the “passive” phase of creation. In drama, the changes resulting from actors first reading the play out loud and then actually lifting the words and actions off the page, both emotionally and physically – is the “active” phase. And the play is at that point a collaborative act between playwright and players, as well as those charged with designing the set, sound, and related visuals. In writing novels like the CHRONICLES, I basically “act” out the dialogue only just to ensure that it sounds like something the speaker would actually say.
I can’t imagine any modern play that landed on the boards exactly as it came off the playwright’s printer or copy machine, down to specific word choices, “beats” and pauses, the use and timing of certain effects, stage directions, ad infinitum.
Postscript: I have vivid sense memories of opening my bedroom window and lowering that puke-filled Green Giant Niblets garbage can onto the back patio, and then going outside before my Mom went outside to hose the thing out, telling her I was up early to wash the Pinto (and check it for any vomit inside).
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