Draft 0 and the Joy of Just Starting to Write

We’ve already written a fair deal about what it’s like to get stuck with writing, some strategies for overcoming stuckness, and what unstuck writing tends to feel like. Today, let’s simplify and focus on a useful concept for getting unstuck: draft 0. Draft 0 has been transformative for us. So much so that we extoll its virtues in our info sheet on effective writing.

The main idea is this: sometimes we get stuck with writing because we’re trying to write draft 1–but sometimes leaping into draft 1 is a leap too far! So what should we do? We need to lower the stakes. This means changing our goal from draft 1 to draft 0.

With draft 1, the goal is to produce a rough piece of writing that’s more or less readable. With draft 0, however, the goal is to use writing more simply as a tool for thinking. In other words, draft 1 is for an audience, whereas draft 0 is for you. We can sketch three key differences between these two goals.

Make the start as low-stakes as possible. Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.

First, whereas draft 1 writing is guided by structure, argument, or flow, draft 0 isn’t. Draft 1 is often written from a basic outline, and tries to stay on track. In contrast, writing draft 0 means letting associations and serendipity take the wheel. If you’ve written a rough outline beforehand, you’re treating this outline as more of a suggestion than as a hard-and-fast structure for your draft 0. For this reason, you’re likely to end up in somewhat surprising places as you write draft 0. This takes a considerable amount of trust in yourself and in the fact that you know what you are doing. It’s worthwhile to build that trust!

Second, whereas draft 1 is usually written in rough language, draft 0 doesn’t even need to be written in Standard English! In draft 0, feel free to indulge those run-on sentences, sentence fragments, comma splices, unusual word choices, shameless overuse and misuse of semicolons, dashes, and other fun bits of punctuation. Chances are that this weirdness is more suitable to your particular train of thought in this moment. So go for it! Every single user of language uses it idiosyncratically, and this is especially apparent in playful, familiar, and otherwise safe contexts. You want that sense of safety and familiarity to drive you onwards! Remember: draft 0 is for you and you only.

Third, whereas in draft 1, the goal is constrained by the medium in which you’re writing, for draft 0, it doesn’t particularly matter if you jump around between notebook, laptop, or scrap paper. With draft 1, you want to finish that letter, fill that page, or get to the end of that blog post. With draft 0, you can switch from sentences to point-form, from laptop to notebook, from print to cursive, from writing to talking it out, and back again. Some research (that we’ve summarized here) shows that switching things up in this way energizes us. Writers have always known the value of changing settings and contexts, and this includes the context of the writing technology itself. Since the goal is to write your draft 0 in the service of thinking, if your brain wants to make a leap elsewhere, you should follow that as far as is reasonable.

In sum, draft 0 is more of an attitude than a set of rules to follow. The key point is: working on draft 0 is enacting the connection between writing and thinking. You want to bypass your Editor Brain as much as possible and just write. You will iron out the wrinkles later, but the draft 0 mindset will help you produce material, and the more you produce, the better and easier writing will get, regardless of content and genre.

So get on it and bang out the thing you need to do! Do it for yourself and nobody else, at least initially.