"There shouldn't be anything rough about a first draft," I once heard a professor say. “It should be as perfect as you can make it.” Like that wise professor, I too do not care for the term "rough draft" but prefer "first draft." Why? Because the “rough” first draft is the one you write only for yourself. You’re telling yourself a story or explaining an argument to yourself. But the REAL first draft you hand in for evaluation should have been written for an audience (albeit an audience of one: your professor).
Bestselling horror writer Stephen King describes an apt metaphor for this process in his excellent (but unfortunately titled) book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. King’s book is a lapel-grabbing narrative about writing and the author’s apprenticeship as a writer, but (in my estimation) the ho-hum title makes it sound like a dreary textbook. At any rate, King relates an anecdote in which a veteran newspaper editor gives writing advice to King, a schoolboy intern for the paper.
King paraphrases this wily editor as saying:
[W]rite with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right -- as right as you can, anyway -- it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it.
In other words, revision brings the audience into consideration. So the “first” draft you hand in to your instructor (assuming you have a teacher or professor enlightened enough about the writing process to require multiple drafts) is not the first time you’ve written it. Instead, it should be the “door open” first draft written with an eye toward the reader, not the “door closed” draft written just for you, the writer. Remember, handing in a paper to your teacher is in reality a form of publication, so open the door!
© 2014 Bob Dial. All rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment