Hi friends!
So, this week I launched The Experiment. This is a new project, in which I plan to write a first draft of a novel, in public. The idea is that this is going to be a warts-and-all insight into my process, and an opportunity for me to ‘put my money where my mouth is.’
What do I mean by that? I’ve always said that in order to write well, one must be prepared to write badly. Also, a first draft should be written entirely freely, safe in the knowledge that it will never be seen by anyone, ever. (This is why I call it draft zero in fact; it’s a way of tricking myself into switching off my inner editor and just concentrating on getting stuff done). I frequently tell people that one should get the words down, before concentrating on getting them right, you can fix a bad page, but a blank page is just that, and I also talk a lot about how for me the first draft of a book is analogous to an artist just stretching the canvas and mixing their paints, a novel is written in the edit, not during the draft.
And yet… here I am, about to embark on a project in which I plan to completely ignore all this advice, or to do my best to, anyway. Why?
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