On First Drafts & Heartbreak

Our first drafts are unsavory. 

A first pass at manifesting an idea into the physical realm. It will always have missing ingredients, poorly seasoned sentences, elements which confuse the palate and make someone think “what am I supposed to be tasting here?”

The prospect of writing something that you know is incomplete or leaves a bad taste in your mouth (Ok, I’ll lay off the taste analogy) is often one of the main obstacles for those who are thinking about writing to an audience. It can be so daunting that people dare not to try in the first place. After all, why would you consciously share something that by your own punishing standards is absolute crap? How can you recover your self-worth by publishing that?

Why should you even try in the first place? 

One answer is because you owe it to the world to share your voice/art. 

Yet, there is another way to look at it. 

First drafts are heartbreaks. 

Let me explain. 

When you write, you must throw yourself recklessly onto the page, building trust by showing your scars, imagining that the person you are sharing this with will deem you worthy enough of their attention, and hopefully, their adoration. But even if you manage to do all of this, it doesn’t always go the way you expect (heartbreak). 

As first drafts teach us the most about writing, heartbreak teaches us the most about love. We learn that perhaps we were idealizing our partner, telling ourselves a different story than reality. Were you loving the idea of love, or were you intentionally loving? Were you writing with an eye towards what you think will “sell”, or were you writing what your heart is bursting out to say in that moment—an epiphany in waiting? 

The world doesn’t owe you an audience, but you are worthy of one. The world doesn’t owe you love, but you are worthy of it. 

These dualities seem like jagged edges, they can be hard to feel comfortable around or reconcile. The reality is that they happily coexist, because that’s how life is; the good and the bad at the same time. The good and the bad in ourselves. The good and bad in our romances. The good and bad in our writing.

Yet, you don’t get to the heartbreak without choosing to love first. You don’t get to learn from your first draft until you put it on a page. Both are acts of courage. And the challenge is to throw ourselves into the ether—every time.

The first draft is the soul of your idea. The work and the craft is giving it a body thereafter. But your first draft should be unfiltered, and it must be birthed under an environment of kindness. Judgement time will come, but it doesn’t come while writing the first draft. Jerry Seinfeld, when speaking about the creative process, speaks about the importance of honoring that “wonderful happy feeling” after you write. His rule is to wait 24 hours before he says anything to anyone about what he wrote. 

This is done so that he embraces the achievement of manifesting an idea into the physical realm long enough, so as to not be spoiled by someone’s reaction. This doesn’t mean that you should never share your work, obviously. After all, that is the point of all of this. But we are simple creatures, and before we become kites navigating the winds of other’s opinions, we need to enjoy the achievement of writing in the first place. 

What first draft is waiting in your mind? I realize that comparing first drafts to heartbreak may not be the most effective way to compel you to write. But, they are inescapably related. Heartbreak cannot exist without love. Writing is also an act of love, but it cannot exist without a first draft. 

If you’ve endured heartbreaks, you know that you can survive it, that they make you wiser, and that every heartbreak has led to looking inwards, and consequently finding ways to love deeper, love more presently, even if heartbreak reoccurs. It’s a rite of passage. 

Writing is the same. So write that first draft you’ve been sitting on. Your heart can take it.