There’s a persistent myth that your first effort on a manuscript will be terrible. That a good book or story requires dozens of revision cycles, endless routing through beta readers, and wordsmithing until it’s almost unrecognizable when compared to the first draft.
This is what scientists call horseshit.
Hole in One
Some stories require that kind of massive effort, it’s true. And some writers like to work like that, which is fine. But neither of those facts means that your story isn’t actually kind of great in its initial draft form. There’s a sort of understandable instinct to distrust things that seem too easy, and when you bang out 80,000 words in 3 months and actually love everything you did, it’s natural enough to feel like you must be missing something.
But, hey, it happens, so why not to you? In other words, don’t start tearing your first draft apart and jump into a heavy revision just because. Consider the possibility that your first draft is actually great, and maybe all you need is a polish?
Of course, I say this as a writer who tends to be very satisfied with my first drafts, or, you know, completely unsatisfied. In other words, I either like my first draft enough to polish it and do something with it, or I despise it and want to bury it in the back yard and never admit it existed. For me, personally, there’s nothing in-between.
But assuming your first draft is trash just … well, just because all first drafts must be trash? That’s crazy. In fact, I’d encourage the opposite: Assume your first draft is fire, and then try to find reasons why it isn’t. Because I firmly believe most first drafts are actually pretty good, and most revision is kind of unnecessary in the sense that it doesn’t actually improve things, just re-arranges them.
Of course, what do I know. I’m sitting here wearing a cardboard box as pants as I write this.