Early & Alone #92: Drafting

On making mistakes in writing and in life

Ann Patchett doesn’t write in drafts. This revelation is buried in a paragraph in an essay called “The Nightstand” in her most recent essay collection, These Precious Days. When I read it, my jaw dropped. Here’s what she writes:

Several months before, the Librarian of Congress had contacted me, wanting my papers. I told her I didn’t have papers. I wrote my novels on a computer and didn’t print out my drafts. More to the point, I didn’t write in drafts. I worked on one chapter, one page, one paragraph, a single sentence, over and over again until it was right, then I moved ahead. I made no record of any of that. I had nothing to collect.

There are several things in this paragraph that my brain simply cannot compute. Of course, there’s the mind-blowing idea of not writing in drafts. And then there’s the idea of “having nothing to collect.”

The larger essay is about reckoning with the past, as she goes through boxes of correspondence and stories she’d written in high school, college, grad school—boxes of paper her family had kept because she’d never had any interest. She’d been adamant that she had no reason to look back, despite acknowledging that this flies in the face of the great Joan Didion line that one should always be on “nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.”

This line of thinking doesn’t square with me, a person who identifies as a “sentimental hoarder,” who has stacks of hatboxes and shoeboxes full of the detritus of my life, from time-softened notes passed in high school to Broadway playbills and ticket stubs and birthday cards and trinkets. The things that carry meaning only for me on this entire planet. I also, of course, have every journal and notebook I’ve kept as a diary since I was 14, folders full of college essays and grad school stories, boxes full of photos.

Yes, these things take up an ungodly amount of space, something I have been finding out the hard way as I’ve tried to jigsaw the ever-growing stacks into various closets in tinier and tinier apartments. But I can’t part with it—it would be like severing a limb.

Now, I can believe that there are people who don’t live like this. Writers who don’t live like this, though? That’s another idea entirely. I attended a workshop with Alexander Chee a few years ago at a Muse & the Marketplace conference where he gave brilliant tips on how to do research on oneself—how to plumb the depths of Gmail and planners and the photos on your iPhone and those old shoeboxes in the back of the closet to flesh out remembered scenes when writing creative nonfiction. How can one do that when they’re intent on keeping their gaze straight ahead, like a carriage horse with blinders on?

But okay, say I can make peace with not holding on to old papers. Space is an issue, objects are just objects, you can’t take it with you, etc.. I get it. But I draw the line at not writing in drafts. I mean…COME ON. Who does that?!

Well…as I’m typing this, I’m realizing that I don’t draft these Substacks. Whoops! So I guess it can be done. But let’s be real. Ann Patchett doesn’t have a Substack (that I know of!). Ann Patchett doesn’t NEED a Substack! She’s written over a dozen books—novels, memoir, essay collections, a children’s book. Not drafting while writing a book-length project? I’m sorry, that is completely bonkers.

Clearly, Ann Patchett doesn’t need my opinion. She’s all set (remember, a dozen prize-winning, best-selling books). But I really can’t wrap my head around it. The more I think about it, the angrier I get. Maybe angry is the wrong word. Upset? Personally attacked? Stymied?

If you have read any craft book, have taken any writing class or one-day workshop, or just looked up "best writing quotes,” you will see writer after writer recommend some version of Anne Lamott’s famous “shitty first draft.” Some writers say the real writing doesn’t happen until revision. My writing process falls somewhere in between. Though I love the idea of getting over the fear of writing by just giving yourself permission to write anything, just to get the words out on the page, I still can’t stop myself from going back to edit as I go. (I’m an editor, I can’t help myself.) But stopping after every single sentence, or even paragraph, to perfect it? I would never ever finish anything. (Not that I finish much of what I start now….)

Thinking about writing in this way makes me panic. Clearly. Imagine trying to live life this way—not moving forward until you get everything just right. It wouldn’t work! You’d never leave the house!

It’s sometimes hard to remember, especially when you’re making a big decision, that you can change things. If you’re deciding between two job offers or choosing where to live or what to write about next—you can always go back and change your mind if you find that what you chose isn’t working. Yes, it might suck and be hard, but the only way to find out is to make the decision in the first place.

I’m not at all sure that this metaphor is making sense. But when I think about drafting in writing, I think about how many versions of myself I’ve been, and how many versions there are left to go. If you’d told me 10 years ago that I’d be living with two teenagers in a house in my hometown, I wouldn’t have believed you. At all. Sometimes I look around and wonder, “How did I get here?” I suspect you do too.

And that’s the joy of drafting! When I’m writing, I often don’t know where I’m going to end up. I start with an idea and go with it. I often figure out what I’m trying to write as I’m writing it. Like many writers, writing helps me figure out what I think. I can only get there by trying different routes, different words, different perspectives. Different beginnings and endings and middles. No draft is perfect, not even the final one. It’s kind of fun to look back and see how you got there, though.

Did any of this make sense? What is your writing process? Tell me in the comments!

Bright Spots

• Love this New Yorker cartoon.

• Have you ever done the “Dark Side of the Rainbow” trick? I thought this oral history was fascinating.

• Are you playing the new NYT game, Connections? It’s addictive and I’ve added it to my daily Wordle habit.

• A feel good dog story.

• Welcome to Mary Oliver Garden.

• I saw a TikTok about how good Klondikes are and so I bought some the next time I was grocery shopping and I’m happy to report—THEY HOLD UP.

• My friend Kim started a Substack about writing and the moon and I really enjoyed her most recent post about the blue moon and the rarity of good writing luck.