Welcome to No Write or Wrong! I’m Holly Rose, author of Until the Stars Fall (releasing January 16, 2024), an adult speculative romance from Mystic Owl. I’ve been a writer and editor for, um, let’s just say a lot of years, and my mission is to bring you pithy, helpful content that improves your writing life. 

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A First (and Last) Introduction

In the future, these posts will be a lot shorter. But to start, it’s important to me that you know the inspiration behind the title, No Write or Wrong. I struggle with anxiety. And one of the many brilliant things my therapist has said to me over the years is what she tells me when I’m stressing over a decision in my life: “there’s no right or wrong, babe.” And you know what? Since most of my decision anxiety comes from the inconvenient and unfair fact that I do not possess a functioning crystal ball, she’s right—there usually isn’t a right or wrong. The answer is always to gather all the information I can, and make the best decision I can with what I know now. 

Recently it struck me how very much that statement applies to writing. When you’re writing, so few things are strictly right or strictly wrong. My primary belief about being a writer is that each of us brings our unique brains, experiences, processes, knowledge, skills, and attitudes to our art. What works for me may or may not work for you—or it could spark another option neither one of us has thought of. 

The bottom line is that I’m not an expert. I just love to talk about writing. So let’s talk about loving your first draft!

Ugh, Holly, Do I Really Have to Love My First Draft?

Yes. Yes you do. (If it works for you!)

Honoring and loving your drafting process is something you’re going to hear from me a lot. Switching mindsets from “the first draft is crap” to “the first draft is just me figuring things out” was immensely freeing for me. And it’s especially top of mind because I’m in the middle of drafting the second book in the Interstellar Witches series, so I thought I’d start my blog here.

Whether you call it a zero draft or a first draft, whether you’re a plotter/pantser/plantser, whether you’re writing your first book or your twentieth, I hope these four thoughts can help you. 

When you’re drafting:

1. Suspend your judgment (of your writing) and your disbelief (in yourself). There’s no right or wrong, babe. You’re still figuring things out when you’re drafting—and don’t even think about comparing what you’re writing to a published book that has gone through more revisions and edits than you can imagine. Even if you’ve meticulously plotted before starting to write, you’re still in the early stages of your creative process. Sentences don’t have to flow beautifully. You don’t have to show, don’t tell. You’re creating a jigsaw puzzle by sketching on individual puzzle pieces in ways that make sense right now. By the time you finish the whole picture, you will have erased, re-drawn, painted, painted over, and rearranged your puzzle pieces—it’s a process. (This also goes for new content in a mostly-finished manuscript!)
2. Accept that you don’t know everything about this story yet. No matter how much you’ve worked on this idea before drafting, it hasn’t cooked in your brain long enough for you to have figured everything out. Drafting is different from plotting; it opens new doors and new ways of seeing your characters and your story. Completing a draft takes time, and your best ideas aren’t always your most creative or original. 
3. It’s okay to write stand-ins for a future idea to a this-chapter problem. You have to get a prince and his swashbuckling rescuer out of the castle really fast, but you don’t have a great idea for how to exactly do that yet? So literally just write that in your first draft, if you need to: “They get out of town on horses, or maybe on a boat if I need to work in a sea captain or a pirate later.” And then move on. It really is okay. And the way brains work on things in the background, two chapters later you may have a brilliant idea that solves multiple problems in your story, including how to get those crazy kids out of the castle.
4. Consciously remind yourself of the above three points the whole time you’re drafting. I rarely go more than a paragraph without falling into one or more of the same three pits of despair: This Is Shit, This Story Sucks, and I’m a Terrible Writer. But I know I can only make it better if I don’t stop writing. The only wrong way to draft is…not to draft. The only right way to draft is…there is no one right way. See? No right or wrong, babe.

I’ll leave you with a few of my favorite quotations about first drafts to continue to try and woo you to my side (no shit-talking the first draft allowed—looking at you, Hemingway):

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About My Book, Until the Stars Fall

Releasing January 16, 2024 from Mystic Owl

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A Book You Have to Read:
Together We Rot by Skyla Arndt