Happy Motivation Monday, Writers! It’s the start of a new week. Time to get motivated!

I think Motivation Mondays are important for writers because it is easy to get down as a writer. It’s easy for us to lose motivation when we receive rejection letters or bad reviews. To be our own worst critics when we read our writing. To edit ourselves before we even get the words on the page.

So today for Motivation Monday, I want to talk about The First Draft.

Like I said above, sometimes we edit ourselves before we even get the words down. We, as writers, will sometimes sit frozen staring at the computer screen unable to write because we want to find the perfect word to finish the sentence. We need the perfect character name. The exact perfect description of our main character. The perfect simile or metaphor.

But the thing about First Drafts is: they don’t have to be perfect; they just have to be written.

Don’t waste your time searching for the perfect word. Don’t overthink what you are writing. Don’t waste your valuable writing time editing the same paragraph over and over. Just write what comes to you. Don’t criticize yourself while you are writing.

First drafts are just you telling yourself the story. You, the writer, putting your imaginary world and friends to paper. The plot holes don’t have to be perfectly filled and everything doesn’t have to be wrapped up with a perfectly neat bow. First drafts are meant to be messy and imperfect. That’s what the editing and revision step is for that comes later.

Ernest Hemingway said, “The First Draft of anything is shit.”

A few First Draft writing tips:

Focus on your ideas and how to organize them.
Let your prewriting/outline/plotting guide you.
Write rapidly and let your natural writing voice guide you.
Follow your Muse if you get inspired while writing a scene.
Feel free to skip around to different scenes while you write. There isn’t any rule that says you have to write in order.
Write everything that comes to your mind.
Do not delete scenes or paragraphs even if you rewrite them. Cut and copy them to another document or just keep both the original and rewrite until you get to the revision process.
Remember you will clean up the messy First Draft later.

So keep in mind not to stress while you are writing. Stop worrying about being perfect. Just write!