Wannabe writers are fond of repeating Ernest Hemingway’s apocryphal quote, “The first draft of anything is shit.” That can be useful advice for those perfectionists who get lost in an endless cycle of revision. However, it can easily result in a first draft so off course that revising it is a waste of time, an illusion of progress with no actual progress.
In my experience, if a first draft is to have any value, it must at least be heading in the right direction. It does not need to be perfect, but it needs to be somewhat polished. Parts of it should survive to reach the final draft. Of course, even this modest goal takes more time than spewing your guts out, but the advantage is that each draft becomes less painful than the last one. In the end, it probably takes no longer than any method; in fact, it can often be quicker because you have more direction.
Yes, a warning against over-perfection should be taken seriously. (Although quoting Hemingway’s comment in this way is ironic, because if anyone was a perfectionist, he was. He claimed that The Old Man and The Sea had fifty drafts). But in listening to the comment as a warning against perfectionism, be sure you don’t go to the opposite extreme, and relax standards altogether.
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