Kitchen Sink That First Draft

Lists of writing tips are always popular (and sometimes overdone), but Josh Swiller’s 12 tips in the latest Glimmer Train bulletin are a delight to read. Two of my favorite tips, directly quoted:

• Kitchen sink that first draft. Throw every damn thing in there. If you aren’t sure something belongs, if you aren’t even remotely clear what the point of a certain tangent is—in it goes. It can help to do this draft with pen and paper, in poor handwriting, so you can’t be eying and judging what you’ve put down as you go along.
• And throughout the process, please recognize and celebrate the fact that writing is completely ridiculous. At any moment—say when you’re agonizing over whether to use the word “recognize” or “understand” or even just the pedestrian “know”—at that moment, a single willow branch abounds with the glory of a thousand star deaths. Your own fingers typing away on the keyboard, in their fine motor control and patchwork unique-to-all-existence wrinkles, are the Grand Central Station of four billion years of evolution. Are your feet crossed at the ankles? Imagine that! Does it matter whether your obvious artistic brilliance is recognized and understood and known? It does not, brother. Drown your sorrows over this travesty in the dust motes dancing in the sunbeams or in your old dog’s sighs. Life is too short and too glorious for resentment.

Read the other excellent tips over at the Glimmer Train site.

Plus, check out these other essays on writing from the latest bulletin:

• On Betraying Family by Louise Farmer Smith
• Getting Outside by Hugh Sheehy
• Keep Away by John M. Keller
• Story Endings With Staying Power by Gregory Spatz

Jane Friedman

Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.

Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.