First Round Draft

There are two opposing views of how a writer (or aspiring writer) should go about the business of writing. One, from the book Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway, involves constant writing. Write at consistent time. Don't worry about the content. Just write. This is the first draft. It's crap from the beginning. The good drafts are the following ones. Each pass through the material edits, enlarges, trims and otherwise improves the overall quality of the piece. The important bit is to write and practice.

The other, to quote a writer friend of mine is [the lack of caps is due to the author]

write. if you want. don't force it.
let the creative energy come out of you.
Find the right time to write for you in the day. All that can be done in that time is to open the window and let creativity in.

The major difference here is the reference to creativity as a driving force of the initial draft. The first opinion seems to place the creativity in the whole process. The second seems to place much of the creativity in the beginning. Knowing my friend, I know that he puts a lot of stock in the rewrite phase, but what he is advocating is that one can only write when they are creative. This thinking is usually the kind that results in self-inflicted shotgun wounds.

There are, I think, two kinds of writers (I know, I know. People who put people into two categories are small minded): those need to be creative from the get go, and those who don't. Those who do can get blocked for long periods of time, affected by their mood or environment. My friend is one of these. The other set of writers use techniques to generate creativity: free writing and other tools.

I certainly sound like I'm advocating the first opinion. I'm definitely using that reasoning for writing daily and publishing daily (well, almost daily). I do need ideas to begin with. Many of these essays start with an idea. I'm comfortable with my environment and mood right now, which might be why the ideas are occurring on a regular basis.

For example, the kernel for this particular essay resulted from the writing of the previous. The content didn't trigger, but the fact that I was not happy with the result. Now the plan for it is to let it sit for a while, and come back to it. In other words, it needs to go through a second draft phase.