On the Draft Zero Room

and In It, Too

At the beginning of a new workshop, I used to tell the writers that we were in The First Draft Room.

I would say that in this place, two things hold true —

YOU ARE FORGIVEN

YOU CAN

You are forgiven because everything you are attempting is directed away from where you think you are and towards somewhere possible that you don’t yet know.

You can because it’s not worth wasting time thinking about whether something is possible. The very fact you’re thinking about whether something is possible means you want to do it.

There’s an anecdote about the philosopher JL Austin (1911-1960) that I remember reading once, though I can’t find it now. A child, who knew Austin was a philosopher, asked him if time travel was possible. Austin replied to say something like, ‘Well, no-one’s done it yet — so why don’t you give it a good go, and see what you find out?’

That seems to me the perfect answer.

My aim in any writing workshop (as in this diary) is to make writing seem more doable, by giving practical advice or giving permission or in any other way I can think of.

It’s best not to prejudge what you might find yourself capable of creating.

A First Draft, as I used to present it, wasn’t the point of writing, it was a start point — one among many.

What happened in the First Draft Room stayed in the First Draft Room.

And what happened there absolutely didn’t have to be any kind of good, it just to be every kind of useful, energetic, curious.

A few years ago, I stopped saying the First Draft Room, because I’d read online about the idea of Draft Zero. I think this was on Jason Arnopp’s blog.

Arnopp wasn’t the originator of Draft Zero. And it seems likely it wasn’t screenwriter John Rogers either — although he mentioned it back around 2005.

Arnopp said —

the concept of Draft Zero helps cement the idea in your head that this draft is your own personal sandpit.

I junked all talk of The First Draft Room immediately, and now introduce the idea of the workshop taking place in The Draft Zero Room.

If someone has a better approach than you do, adopt it.

But the same two things hold true in the Draft Zero Room as in the First Draft, forgiveness and possibility. Only this way of naming it lowers the writers’ expectations even more.

Hopefully now they will do the in-workshop writing exercises with a sense of freedom and mischief.

And they’ll take that away with them, when they go home. I’ve at least tried to make their workplace slightly less intimidating.

Anyone can adopt the Draft Zero approach, even if at other times they might consciously want to start fresh with a First Draft. (I switch between the two.)

To say you’re writing a First Draft can already put on too much pressure. Because it suggests you know that what you’re writing might lead to a Second Draft. So don’t force it even to be that. Say it’s a pre-draft, a draft towards a draft; say it’s as non-existent as zero.

Whenever we start writing, and we know we’re never going to show what we’re doing to anyone, we can say we’re in The Draft Zero Room.

Here all is forgiven, because everything is done in the wholehearted desire to work towards one day doing something that isn’t draft zero.

Here everything can be done, because it only has to be done terribly badly. Bodging is fine and dandy.

When they’re doing workshopping exercises, I encourage writers to use their Zero Draft as a chance to make a big mess.

If they don’t want to share their work, they don’t have to. And if they want to rip it up and chuck it in the wastepaper bin at the end of the day, I’ll make sure it’s disposed of unread.

One thing I’ve learned from this diary is that even the most basic assumptions don’t fit everyone.

Some people will find this idea of Draft Zero disgusting.

I know there are some writers who feel unable to move on from one sentence until they’ve got it as right as they can. They go from start to finish of a story or a novel, making each part as shaped and polished as they can.

This is how Anthony Burgess said he wrote Earthly Powers. It’s how we see Lee Child writing Make Me in Andy Martin’s book Reacher Said Nothing. (Recommended.)

But by making your First Draft also your Last Draft, or something close to it, you’re setting ourself up to write something that’s likely to be full of lumps, and you’re making any future editing extremely painful.

It’s far harder to cut a paragraph on which you spent a week than one that took half a morning or half an hour.

But cutting — the religion of cutting — is another matter.