In a new post, Kristen Lamb says fast drafting can help you outrun Spock Brain. “Fast drafting is when we sit down and write a book within a given amount of time,” she explains. “It can be as short as two weeks, but I don’t recommend longer than six.”
Why on earth would anyone do this?
“Many new authors slog through that first book, editing every word to perfection, revising, reworking, redoing…and they never finish,” Lamb says. “So they start another book and edit and nitpick and…don’t finish. When I used to be a part of critique groups, it was not at all uncommon to find writers who’d been working on the same book two, five, eight and even ten years.”
The solution? Fast drafting.
“Perfect is the enemy of the finished,” Lamb writes. “Most people are not interested in buying our clever and perfect half-finished manuscript.” If you think that drafting quickly will inhibit quality, Lamb offers some examples:
- William Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying in six weeks.
- Ernest Hemingway wrote The Sun Also Rises in six weeks.
- John D. MacDonald wrote The Executioners in a month.
- Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 in nine days on a rented typewriter.
“When we write quickly, we get into The Zone and pass The Wall,” Lamb says. “We become part of the world we’re creating. Fatigue wears out the cerebral cortex (the ‘Inner Editor’ which I will call our ‘Spock Brain’). Fatigue diverts us to the Limbic Brain (also known as the Reptilian or Primal Brain, or for today’s purposes—‘Captain Kirk Brain’).”
Our reptilian brain is emotional and instinctive. It can work better and faster when our logical brain isn’t there reminding us about grammar rules. And Lamb says this also helps us pack more punch into our writing, because we aren’t holding back emotionally. But don’t worry. Our logical Spock Brain can come back when it’s time to edit and revise.
“When we get the stories out faster, they’re more visceral,” Lamb says. “We get more practice with more stories since we aren’t letting Spock nit-pick for the next ten years…which he will do if Kirk doesn’t go running the other way despite Spock’s protests.”
The best part is that by practicing fast drafting, you’ll get better at fast drafting. “Fast drafting might not pay off the first time, the second, the third,” Lamb says. “But we are training our brains how to FINISH. We are hard-coding storytelling into our neurons.”
