Gush – Compost – Baby Draft

No matter how many times I hear these terms, they make me recoil. Not in anger, but in sadness. Why are we hurling the kind of epithets at ourselves which would reduce us to rage-tears if we saw them in our reader reviews on Goodreads?

I understand the origin of this practice. I recognize the difficulty in silencing the harsh critic who lives in every writer’s brain. Saying “It’s just a garbage draft” gives us permission NOT to be perfect. To push the words out onto the page without stopping to edit, second-guess, or belabor over word choice. 

It’s a trick writers play on themselves. For some, the inner critic is so loud that this trick is the only way they can write at all. I understand this. I truly do. I have no wish to disparage anything that helps my fellow wordsmiths birth beauty into the world.

But that’s just it: I believe we are birthing beauty. Putting words on the page is a work of art. Anyone who commits to this labor—who pours their soul out in an utterly unique collection of vowels, consonants, and punctation—is an artist. And artists deserve respect.

Especially from themselves. 

If we believe that words have power, then we must recognize that repeated labeling of a thing can shape our feelings about that thing. Especially, alas, if the label is negative. Call someone beautiful every day, and eventually, at least a tiny part of them will start to believe it. Call them ugly every day, and they’ll believe it much faster. 

If we keep referring to our drafts as ‘garbage’, I fear that will ultimately become what we believe about our work. It’s garbage. Vomit. $*!&. Something detestable, to get out of oneself as soon as possible—not to shape into something beautiful, but to be disposed of immediately. Something one hauls to the dump or flushes down the toilet, where it belongs. 

Something worthless. 

Ergo, my proposal for my writing friends: not an abolition of the first-draft trick, but a simple change in the terminology. I set forth these alternative ‘first draft’ terms for your consideration:

Gush Draft

You’re telling a story to your best friend, and you’re really excited about it. They’re excited to hear it. They’re waiting, breathless, for you to finish every scene. There’s no time to agonize over word choice—and no need, because your best friend has seen you at your worst and loves you anyway. They’re in your corner. Say the word, and they’ll beat that inner critic senseless with a baseball bat. 

Compost Draft

All credit for this one goes to the inimitable Rachel Palm, Queen of Fairy-Cottage-Gardencore. (Find her on Substack!) According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, ‘composting’ is ‘the process of recycling organic materials into an amendment that can be used to enrich soil and plants.’ ENRICH. This word connotes that no time spent writing is wasted. Every word on the page is adding value to the story’s soil. A compost heap is not a garden, but it helps provide the nutrients necessary for the garden to flourish.

Baby Draft

Years ago, upon finishing the first draft of my fourth novel, I wrote a post comparing the birth of a book to the birth of a child. Bringing life into the world is a long, messy, painful process. And no one expects the mother to produce a perfect, fully-grown adult out of her womb. On the contrary, quoting from that previous post:

Now that the first draft is alive and kicking, a new kind of labor begins. I daren’t present this book to you now; it’s a helpless infant, stark naked and still covered in the mess of afterbirth. Let me clean it up, clothe it, and teach it to walk and talk a bit, and then – then you shall meet my literary offspring.

Newborn babies don’t look anything like the adults they will eventually become. It takes years of patient, faithful care to help each child discover and live their true identity. Our first draft is like that: not anywhere near perfect or finished, but precious. The result of great labor. An occasion for joy.