Bruises and Getting through Ugly First Drafts

I have been working with writers who are trying to get words on the page for the first time in a long time. I see posts left and right from teachers trying to learn abruptly how to teach students online. I’m encouraging musicians to adapt overnight to giving my teen lessons via the internet to save their income stream. And everyone has the same worry: it’s going to be ugly. 

Yes, it is. 

I think it’s fair to say, too, that we are experiencing the ugly first draft of our unknown future. For that outcome, I am oddly hopeful. Because I know that first drafts lead to good final drafts if we’re willing to work through the revision process. And revision always requires an initial visioning—a broken, incomplete place to start—followed by a wise assessment of where the problems lie. 

But right now, the problem with your first draft—whatever that project may be—isn’t what you think. 

Your Point of Pain May Not Be Your Actual Problem 

The first principle we need to understand when we approach the page (and our current reality) is that our point of pain may not be our actual problem.  

Do you stare at the screen and think you have writer’s block? Perhaps. Perhaps you failed to organize your material and thoughts well enough first, a common problem that in ordinary times is my normal diagnosis. Perhaps you need to learn more. Perhaps you need to conquer the disruption to your security and routine. Perhaps that politician just needs to be quiet. Perhaps the media needs to stop hyping the twenty-four-hour news cycle and you need to stop feeding on it. Perhaps. 

But consider also that at this moment our foremost systemic problem is our collective grief. We will never fix grief by ignoring it. Processing grief is painful but good. 

I once danced eight to ten hours per day, mostly in pointe shoes, balancing with precise strength on the tips of my toes. Over the past decade, various injuries and surgeries have reduced me at times to a standing capacity of only ten minutes. An inability to bend in certain directions or lean forward over my bowl of soup became my norm. Since some of my residual pain after procedures made no medical sense, doctors assumed the difficulties were just part of a chronic pain process I would never rid myself of. 

But in the past three weeks, my dear physical therapist took a novel approach. She peppered my body with deep, abiding bruises. And it wasn’t abuse. 

She dug into my legs, my hips, my pectoral muscles, my neck, my shoulders, and my armpit with a sharp elbow or knuckle, using pressure, friction, and heat to break up myofascial tissue that had entrapped nerves. I entered the clinic with right-side, low-back pain. She touched everywhere except my low back, saying that my back was merely the pain collection point of all the trapped nerves tugging in other places along my body.  

I probably have missed some exact technical description here, but here’s what I know for certain: three weeks of bruises have created victory over seven years of back spasm. I endured pain and painful treatments for many years, but we repeatedly missed the source. Pain continued to cripple me until we looked elsewhere for the true systemic problem. 

New writing techniques, beating yourself up for supposed laziness, feeling guilt for scrubbing the floors and doorknobs instead of sitting at the computer, or yelling at your bored (and also grieving) kids will not solve your ugly first draft problem. Allowing yourself to grieve well will give you a much better start. 

Treat the Genuine Source of Pain 

Normally, I tell my writers that you don’t fear an ugly first draft. You fear a lack of worldly success; you doubt your competence; you hope to invest less time and hard work in the process than you now see is needed. Fear of ugly indicates a pride problem. Give that overly rosy self-assessment and overly robust self-dependence a few bruises. 

This assessment still rings true for the ugly draft of our future we are experiencing. Pride is a systemic problem. But the scattered brain function of grief, especially anticipatory grief, makes the cycle of the pride problem worse. You can’t focus. You fear failure. You see yourself failing. And you can’t focus even more. 

Take a deep breath. Allow yourself to be sad or angry in a healthy way. You won’t get stuck there. You will move through it. 

It’s true: Our world, our jobs, and our families will not look the same when this pandemic has run its course. We will have many bruises. We will have loss. But—and you must entertain this contrary consideration—we will also see victory. We know our society—divided as it is by politics, ideology, and economics—cannot continue on indefinitely as it has. This pandemic is forcing change just as the Great Depression did. No individual will like everything that comes from it, but surely we will see some new good, some new ability to love our neighbors.  

Similarly, the draft you are working on now will not look the same after you revise it. So let yourself start somewhere ugly. It’s okay. You cannot get to re-vision until you find the initial vision. And then ask for help. We all need others to help wisely assess where the problems lie, to see the systemic difficulties creating our pain points. Then we can gratefully accept well-informed bruises that will free up new learning, new systems, and new movement.  

Start where you are with humble confidence that you can learn, revise, and grow. 

But go for the ugly.  

I’m right there with you. Whether in our writing or in our world, let’s all embrace the bruises that come with the cure. 

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If you would like to talk about how to get through your “ugly first draft,” whatever that looks like for you, you can reach me through my contact page, here, at sallmanediting.com. If you want to talk about what it looks like to have an eternal hope that overrides our fear of death and loss, you can reach out to me the same way, or comment below. 

For a helpful discussion on grief in our current context, read That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief by Scott Berinato.