February 18, 2025 • 32 mins
It’s possible that “staying positive” could be keeping you stuck.
In today’s episode, I use the analogy of writing a book (first draft first, second draft second) to talk about how we naturally grow and develop as people. A first draft is inevitably messy and chaotic, raw and guttural. The second draft is cleaner and holds more clarity. But there’s no getting to the second draft without the first draft.
Oftentimes, in life, we try to get to the “second draft” before we ever write the horrible first draft. We would like to skip to the healing, the moral, the integration, the clarity, the understanding. But there’s no such thing.
If you’re in the messy first draft of your story, maybe it’s time to own that fact and tell the raw, harsh, guttural truth.
Could telling a more raw and guttural version of the story actually help you access the second draft you’re reaching for?
Host: Ally Fallon // @allyfallon // allisonfallon.com
Follow Ally on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allyfallon/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the words you write, all the beauty and
piece and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story. You got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down on cold It's all about and write,
(00:24):
write your story. Write you write your story.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast.
I'm Ali Fallon. I'm your host, and on today's episode,
I want to talk about an epiphany that I had
recently while I was doing some edits on a manuscript
from one of the authors in my book in six
Months group. I've talked about this previously on an episode,
but I added a couple of bonus calls to the
calendar for my most recent group of authors working toward
(00:52):
completing their manuscripts. During these bonus calls, we did what
I call live edits, which is basically where an author
shares with me a portion or a sample of the
writing that they've been working on, and I add my
edits to the document, just like I would if I
was their developmental editor or if I were working at
the publisher and receiving the completed manuscript and then we
go over those edits together on a call as a
(01:15):
group in front of the rest of the group. It's
really cool because it's amazingly vulnerable for an author to
share their writing with me, even if we're doing this
private leave and if it's just between the two of us,
But the vulnerability and courage that it takes for one
of these aspiring authors to share their writing with me
when they know that I'm going to not only give
them constructive feedback on the writing, but I'm going to
(01:36):
do that in front of their peers. It just takes
a ton of courage for anyone to readily volunteer for
that and raise their hand, and it creates this environment
of just total trust and surrender to the experience that's
really amazing. And then everyone else who's on the call
gets to experience their feedback almost vicariously. I think you'd
(01:59):
be surprised at how often there's overlap between what I
would tell one author and what I would tell another author.
You'd think, like, oh, no, the feedback on one author's
work is going to be totally different than the feedback
you'd give to another author. And there is some of that.
There is some variation but then there are certain themes
that I find myself talking about over and over and
over again. And I shared about a few of the
(02:19):
other themes in a previous episode. But one of the
themes that I noticed coming up in our most recent
session was this idea of first draft material and second
draft material. So I want to talk about what I
mean by first draft material and second draft material. And
I also want to say that I'm going to make
an application here beyond the world of writing a manuscript.
So if writing a manuscript is not on your bucket list,
(02:42):
this episode still applies to you. And I have something
that I think that's really well, I won't say it's profound,
but something that's really helpful. At least it's been helpful
for me to share and to talk about. And I
want to use the editing idea as a metaphor. So
we're going to talk about editing a book manuscript as
a metaphor of what I think applies to the broader
(03:05):
aspects of our life. So here's what I mean by
first draft second draft material. There's certain material that shows
up in the first draft of a manuscript that just
doesn't need to carry on to the second draft. It's
just almost like as an editor, you think of this
as an immediate delete. And we talk a lot about
in my programs and with authors that I work with
(03:26):
about how the first draft of your manuscript is a
very very rough document, and An Lamott calls this your
shitty first draft. However you want to label this or
whatever word you want to use. If you like shitty
first draft, you can kind of take that from Anlama.
If you want to come up with another way to
talk about it, you're welcome to. But this is just
like the facts of the matter. I've not met anyone
who hasn't had this experience. The first draft of a
(03:48):
manuscript that comes out out from your mind onto the
page is going to be messy. It's going to be disorganized.
It is in certain parts going to have error. It's
going to have, you know, factual errors. It's going to
have parts of the story that are boring, parts of
the story that need to be be developed more, some
pieces that are in bullet points that haven't even been
(04:10):
fully developed into sentences or paragraphs yet. This is just
how the sausage is made. This is how it works
when you're writing a book or writing honestly anything. If
you're writing an article or even writing, you know, an
Instagram caption. I feel like with certain types of writing
there's a little bit more leniency or understanding that it
can be just kind of like rough, you know, on
Instagram caption. You're not going to maybe spend a ton
(04:32):
of time editing it, or maybe you do. But with
a book manuscript, something that's going to go into print
and exist in that form forever, there are rounds and
rounds and rounds and rounds of edits you do. And
by the time you get to that final version, the
version of the manuscript that you're going to, you know,
hit publish on, send it to the publisher, put it
(04:52):
on the printed page, get it on the bookshelf. That
version of the book is dramatically different than the first
version that you put down. And yet here's the part
that I want to emphasize today. Without that first version
of the draft, you don't get to the fifteenth version,
you don't get to the fiftieth version. There's no pathway
to that final version without the first version. So the
(05:12):
first version is absolutely necessary, as messy as it is,
as embarrassing as it can be to share it as
much as you read back after the first version and
you go like, oh, this is not what I wanted
to make. It's not what I wanted to create. I
know I'm a better writer than this. I know I have,
you know, something more to say than what's currently here
on the page. It's a necessary evil. It's a part
(05:33):
of the process. It has to exist. It's like the
clay that you're working with, the raw materials that you
need in order to get to the finished base. And
so recognizing that there are these two things, there's this
first draft that has to come into form. It's not
going to be great. It's not going to be representative
of the quality of writing that you know you can do,
(05:53):
or the quality of the book that you know you
want to write. And yet it's a necessary evil. It
has to exist in order for you to get to
finished product. There's a difference, and there's a disconnect between
first draft and second draft. We all want to get
to the second draft and the third, and the fourth
and the fifth. We want to get to that final
draft that we can share with the world and be
super proud of. But if we want to get there,
(06:14):
we have to start with first draft material. Now, I
found myself saying over and over again to a couple
of different authors that I was working with, as I'm
editing their first draft, I say, this is not second
draft material. And sometimes what I mean by that is
this part of the story is really boring. For example,
sometimes you know, we include details in the first draft
(06:35):
of a manuscript that just are not that interesting to
the reader, And a lot of times people worry about this.
When you're writing a manuscript, you think like, oh gosh,
is this interesting to the reader. And I always tell
writers that I'm working with the only way for me
to know if it's interesting to the reader is for
you to put it in the first draft, and then
I can decide, as your editor, does this belong in
the first draft or should it be cut before the
(06:57):
second draft. And there's no shortcutting this, there's no way
to jump around this. It has to go in the
first draft. I cannot edit something that doesn't exist, and
so you have to just kind of put everything in
the first draft. And then there is a lot that
goes in the first draft that gets cut before the
second draft. So that's just one example that there are
things that are maybe like not that interesting to the reader,
(07:17):
are not applicable to the story, don't line up with
the controlling idea. Another element that oftentimes goes in first
draft that gets deleted before second draft would be things
like scaffolding, Like you might say something for the sake
of helping yourself understand the story. You might say like,
I'm going to walk you through this step by step
or something like that, and that line may get cut
(07:40):
between first draft and second draft. It might be something
that you needed to say as scaffolding for yourself to
help yourself understand the organization of the story, but it
is not necessary for the reader. It's just can be
kind of assumed on the reader's part and doesn't need
to be stated directly. It's two on the nose or whatever,
and so it can get deleted before the second draft. Well,
one of the things I started to think of, as
(08:01):
I heard myself saying this over and over and over again,
is that there's first draft material, there's second draft material,
and there's third draft material, and they're different. You know,
a third draft of a manuscript looks very different than
the first draft, but that there's this necessary evil of
the first draft. I started to think about how applicable
this is to our lives. Let me bridge this gap
(08:22):
for you a little bit. What I started to think
about is how often we say things like, well, I
just want to be positive about this situation. This is
just one example of how this shows up in our lives.
When something's happening too in your life and you really
just want to see this through a positive lens. You
want to stay positive because everybody loves to stay positive
and it's a nice thing to do. And I've been
told that being positive is great, So I just want
(08:44):
to stay positive about this situation. I've been taught and
told that, you know, staying positive is a good thing
to do. And so when I tell the story to myself,
when I tell it to other people, I kind of
tell the story at third draft material. I tell the
story through a positive lens, in a positive light. And
while this makes sense and is great, it sometimes jumps
(09:06):
over or skips over what I would call first draft material.
That anytime we're working through a story, and let me
back up for just a second here, because I feel
like it's important to say one of the main reasons
that I love teaching people to tell their own stories,
to write about events that happen in their life. Is
because writing about your life is an amazing way to
(09:29):
metabolize what has taken place for you. To me, this
is the number one reason to write your story. There
are infinite other reasons to write your story, publishing being
one of them, but the number one reason that I
would say every person should write their story is because
it's an incredible way to metabolize and integrate what has
taken place for you. And this metabolization takes place in
(09:50):
a step by step kind of process, like a predictable
unfolding of events. And there's like stage one, just like
draft one. The first time that you sit down to
tell a story is the rawest, most guttural version of
the story. And that version of the story is messy.
(10:11):
It's unpredictable, it's chaotic, it doesn't always have a through
line or a controlling idea or it is there, but
you haven't really, you know, nailed it yet. You don't
really know exactly what it is. You're not following that
unequivocally yet. It's unclear what the story is about, what
the purpose of the story is. The moral of the
story is unclear. It's just kind of the story in
(10:33):
its most raw state. It is a shitty first draft. Now,
even if we're not talking about a draft that we're
planning to publish, just go with me here on the metaphor.
This is what I'm trying to get at. Is that
the first time that you try to tell a story
or talk about something that's taken place for you, it's
going to be first draft material. It's going to be
from the hip, raw, guttural, just disorganized, chaotic, just the
(10:56):
way that it happened, the way that it fell on
you at the time. And a lot of what shows
up in this first draft is so important, like so
important to the healing process of writing, absolutely vital. You
cannot live without this first draft. And yet the first
draft can be really vulnerable, like the most vulnerable form
(11:19):
of the writing that there is incredibly chaotic, confusing, It
can stir up a lot of feelings and emotions, and
so we would rather skip the first draft and move
straight to second draft or third draft. The problem is,
there's no such thing as skipping the first draft. And
maybe that's what this episode should be called. There's no
such thing as skipping the first draft. You cannot whether
(11:40):
you're talking about a piece of writing that you're going
to publish, or whether you're talking about a story that's
unfolding in your life that you would like to upgrade
the moral of, or move to the next level of,
or really integrate it into your life, or really metabolize
it and better understand what the story was here to
teach you. There's no such thing as skipping the first draft.
You just say simply cannot do it. I think a
(12:10):
lot of us really long to skip this first draft.
We wish that there was a way to skip the
first draft, because entering into that first draft can be unsettling,
deeply unsettling, and it also can be embarrassing and kind
of shame inducing, because that first draft of the story
is not all locked down yet. It's a feeling of
(12:30):
like my ducks are not in a row. I do
not understand what this story is about. The moral of
the story is unclear to me at this point. What
the story is about is unclear to me at this point.
And even some of the details of the story are
told in such a way where part of me can
recognize that I'm not really thinking positive about this, and
yet that version of the story where you're just shooting
(12:52):
from the hip is the very foundation that a brilliant
and beautiful story is built upon. And so this is
what this episode is about. And this is the epiphany
that I had that I wanted to share with you
in whatever way that this might be helpful, is that
first draft cannot be skipped. And if when it comes
time to tell your story, whether you're writing it down
(13:12):
so you can publish it, or whether you're writing it
for yourself, or you're just learning to tell a story
to yourself in a more interesting way, or the story
to loved ones, or whatever, however you're going about telling
your story, if you're trying to leap frog over the
first draft, you're going to miss everything that the story
has to show you. I'll tell you an example that
(13:34):
I've talked about before on social media, and I've talked
about it briefly here on the podcast, but I'll just
share the example here so that you can kind of
get a sense of what I'm talking about. When I
sat down to write Indestructible, which was the second book
that I had ever written. It's a memoir about leaving
an abusive and toxic relationship and finding my way on
the other side of that experience. When I sat down
(13:54):
to write the first draft of that book, I didn't
know that it was a book I was going to publish.
I thought I was just writing about my experience in
order to heal from it, and healing from it is
exactly what I got. But when I sat down to
write the first draft of that experience, I was still
living in it. I was not divorced yet, I was
in process of getting divorced. I was still getting really
(14:16):
hooked and triggered by this person who I had been
in a toxic dynamic with for years. I was still
really sad and depressed about the ways that my life
was falling apart. I hadn't made any sense of the
story yet. I didn't really know whose fault this was,
or how did this happen, or how did we even
get here. I think I was still playing the victim
in certain ways. I was still really angry and bitter.
(14:38):
I had so many different elements going on. When I
sat down to write the manuscript, I wrote out the
entire manuscript, which in my mind was not a manuscript.
It was just the story of what took place in
my life from start to finish. And when I finished
that document. I went back to go reread what I
had written, and instantly by habit because I I already been
(15:00):
working and publishing for several years at that point, I
had my editor's lens on, and as I went back
to go reread this story through my editor's lens, my
heart sunk and my stomach sunk because I realized number one,
this story was not going to be interesting to anyone,
that no one would have any interest in reading this
story as it stood, and as I was living it,
(15:20):
it was so gripping and interesting and dramatic and chaotic
and fascinating, and all these things were happening. It felt
like I was living in this movie. Well, when I
put it on the page and I went back to
go read it, I was like, oh, this is not
coming off the page in the way that I experienced
it in my life. And so there was that level,
There was that understanding that as an editor, this would
(15:42):
not be a story I would pass on to the
next level and say like, let's get this book published.
And then on a human level, I was also reading
the story thinking to myself, this narrator, this woman who's
writing this story, I'm not that invested in her I
don't really like her that much. She seems kind of bitter,
she seems a little bit like whiny. She's not really
(16:05):
taking control of her own life. She's not really like
engaged in trying to shape this story. She's just sort
of standing back as if this horrible thing has been
happening to her and how could you know? How could
this be? And what is she going to do moving forward?
And I just didn't really I wasn't endeared to her
as the hero of the story. And it's weird to
say that about yourself talking about yourself and the third person,
(16:27):
but I genuinely had this out of body experience, like
I don't like this woman. I don't want to be
friends with her. I'm not cheering her on from the
other side of things. And then I had the epiphany
that I needed to move this from first draft to
second draft. And I wouldn't have necessarily used that language
at the time, but it was like, Okay, if I
were going to make this story interesting without changing any
(16:49):
of the details, because I'm not going to lie about
what happened, but if I were going to change the
way that this story was written, how would I do that?
And one of the things that I did, was I
really upgraded the narrator voice. Now, narrator voice is the
voice of the hero at the end of the story,
after everything has happened, looking back and telling the story
(17:10):
with omniscient perspective. So basically, think of this like you
telling a story about something that happened years ago in
your life. Now you see it from all the different angles.
You understand what took place and all who all the
players were, and what happened. At the time, you didn't
know what was going on, but now you know what
was going on, and so you can speak about the
story differently. You speak about the story from a thirty
(17:33):
thousand foot view. That's the narrator's voice, and the narrator's
voice is present in the story to promise the reader
that a transformation is coming, because the reader needs to
know we've got a character in the story who's in
a pit right now. They're up against a problem that
they don't know how to solve. The reader needs a
sense that that character, that hero of the story, is
(17:55):
going to change. They're going to transform so dramatically that
by the end of the story not even going to
recognize them. And in order to remind the reader that
that change is coming. The narrator voice comes in, so
you hear both the narrator voice and you witness the
hero taking action on the stage or on the screen
or whatever. The tension between those two voices is what
(18:17):
shows you the arc of a story. So you see
that a transition is coming, You see that a change
is coming, and you see the hero in the hole
up against their unsolvable problem, and the open story loop
is inevitably how does she get from there to there?
And so what I had to do when I came
to the first draft of Indestructible was think through what
(18:39):
I wanted the narrator voice to sound like. And I
really realized as I was reading through the first draft
that I wanted the narrator voice to be a couple
of things. I wanted the transformed version of the hero
to feel confident and to take charge of her own
life and to stop blaming other people for her problems.
And I really wanted her to chew oose to feel
(19:02):
positive about this set of circumstances. In other words, to
say like, this is a horrible thing that happened to me,
but I'm going to take it in stride and I'm
gonna make it, you know, into something really beautiful for
my life. And that was second draft material. It wasn't
available to me in the first draft. It couldn't have
been available to me in the first draft. But without
(19:22):
the first draft, I never could have gotten to second draft,
and without the second draft, I never could have gotten
to third draft. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. On
down the line and indestructible. The book would never have
been published in the way that it was if I
didn't write that first freaking bad draft, that shitty first draft.
That was not just only messy from the standpoint of
you know, the editor who I finally sent the manuscript too,
(19:46):
was saying, like, the timeline's confusing, Like you're jumping around
a little bit, I can't quite follow you. So it
was messy and confusing from that standpoint. But also the
hero of a story wasn't really acting super heroic, so
you weren't endeared to her as a character, And you know,
she was sort of complaining and whining about her life
and blaming all her problems on other people, and so
she just wasn't a sympathetic character. You didn't want to like,
(20:08):
cheer her on from the sidelines. And what I had
to do is insert a new narrator voice, a new
version of me that I hadn't accessed yet, who was
all those things, who was confident. You know, at the
time of my divorce, when I was filing for divorce
and going through the worst situation that I had ever
been in my life to that date, and experiencing all
(20:30):
the pain and the heartbreak and coming to terms with
what was real versus the way I had thought things
would be, that version of me was really broken. She
wasn't confident at all, she didn't feel positive about her future.
And yet I had to decide, this is the person
that I'm going to become. I'm going to become someone
who's confident, who takes charge of her own life, who
(20:52):
is the architect of her own existence, who puts one
foot in front of the other, even when things don't
go the way that I expect, even when things feel
really challenging and hard, even when I'm wronged, even when
there's an injustice. I choose to make the most out
of every situation that's given to me. And I remember
one of my mantras during the time was every single
thing that happens to me in my life is an
(21:14):
opportunity to learn. And I would repeat that to myself
over and over again, and my narrator became that woman,
the woman who really truly believes in every fiber of
her being, that every single thing that happens to me
in my life is an opportunity to learn. But the
only way that she could become the narrator is because
I chose to write that shitty first draft. Is because
(21:34):
I put that shitty first draft on the page. And
I was thinking about this as I was editing manuscripts
the past couple weeks, about what a tremendous act of
courage it is to put that shitty first draft down
on paper. It's an active courage, even if you don't
ever share that with anyone, you know, it's so courageous
for the folks in my group who share that first
(21:56):
draft with the whole group, just unfiltered and unedited. Even
to be able to share that quote first draft of
your story with yourself, where you are radically, radically honest
with yourself about what has taken place, about how that
makes you feel, about what that brings up for you
about what it triggers, about what you genuinely, truly feel
(22:17):
in the moment. It is so challenging to be that
honest with ourselves. We are so in touch with what
we want the story to become that sometimes we miss
that we can never get to where we want to
go if we don't admit where we are now. And
I started to think about how this applies to my
current situation, which I've talked about at length and in
(22:38):
detail in the past season of this podcast. And I've
belabored the point long enough, and I won't go back
into all of the details, but I've talked about how
my husband and I have been in a long season
of struggle, especially around career and finances, and we've been
trying to find our way and find our place. And
I think one of the things I've realized is that
I've had a very hard time being radically honest with
(23:01):
myself about the first draft of this story. This podcast
recording last season in particular, has helped me to get
radically honest, because what the heck do I have to lose.
I'm just here, you know, rambling to myself in a
(23:22):
room alone into a micro vote and hopefully like, you know,
ten people are listening. I know at least a handful
of you are listening, because I do hear from you.
But I've just been kind of reiterating the story to myself,
telling it in a very first draft kind of way,
thinking to myself like, oh gosh, how does this make
me sound? This isn't really the type of podcast that's
going to like elicit hundreds of thousands of listeners. It's
(23:44):
not the thing that's going to help me kind of
climb the ladder or get the most you know, the
biggest show or the most amount of money or whatever,
build my platform, build my career. It's just me shooting
from the hip, giving you first draft material about what's
been taking place in my life and being courageous enough
to show up and be honest about it, like really
brutally honest that it's been frustrating, and it's been really hard,
(24:06):
and I've had a hard time understanding what the heck
is going on, and it's felt unfair at times, and
all the other stuff that I've shared, it's first draft material,
and I just suddenly started to realize, you know, it
can be so challenging to show up with our first
draft material, to really bear our souls to those around us,
and to admit that I'm not where I want to be.
I don't feel overwhelmingly positive about my situation. I have
(24:29):
lacked confidence in many aspects of this whole unfolding experience
that's been that's taken place over the course of the
last five years. I've lacked confidence. I haven't known how
to put one foot in front of the other. I
feel like I have felt at points like, Okay, we've
tried everything. I don't know what else to try. And
that's first draft material. And in order to get to
(24:49):
second draft, the second draft where I want to say
I'm going to be the architect of my own life,
I'm going to choose to remain confident and positive about
what's unfolding in the future in front of me, despite
the fact that things haven't gone the way that I planned.
That second draft material doesn't even become available to me
until the first draft exists. And so here is my
(25:11):
admonition and suggestion to you. If it feels like it
fits for you, I want to just encourage you to
be willing and be brave and be courageous enough to
get your first draft down and this doesn't have to
mean that you're writing a book manuscript. In fact, in
many cases it won't mean that. Maybe it means that
(25:31):
you just kind of journal out what's been taking place
and how you really feel about it. Okay, the really
real way that you feel, not the way that you
think other people want you to say that you feel,
not the way that you know in therapy speak, that
you feel, but the really real way that you feel
about this set of circumstances. Tell Us if you're mad,
tell us if you're sad, tell us if you're devastated,
(25:53):
tell us if you're hopeless, tell us if you're in despair,
if you feel depressed, whatever you feel, however you see it,
whatever is going on for you, just say it the
way that it's true, that it's most true for you
right now, in this moment. And let me tell you
something so brilliant about writing your story is that what
is true for you right now does not stay true,
(26:14):
especially as you admit the truth. It's almost like saying
the truth saying I'm angry, I want out, I don't
want to do this anymore, I am miserable, I'm exhausted. Whatever,
speaking your truth helps the truth to move and to
transform into something new, into a brand new truth where
you have more access to more strength, or more confidence,
(26:34):
or more courage or whatever helps you move from first
draft material to second draft material, so that you now
have access to the second draft. You didn't have access
to it before because you have to start with first draft.
So I want to give you this encouragement, this admonition,
this benediction to begin with the first draft. And maybe
for you that's a book manuscript. Maybe for you it's
(26:55):
a journal entry. Maybe for you it's not like physical
writing at all. It's like literally just calling up a
friend and being like, listen, do you have the space
for me to dump a little bit, because I need
to dump about how upset I truly am. I haven't
really been able to be honest with myself or with
anyone else, and I need to just I just need
to vent. I just need to talk about how truly
(27:16):
upset and frustrated that I am and find a place
where it's safe enough to share your first draft. It
is no small act of courage to be willing to
share your first draft material with yourself, let alone with
anyone else. If you have even one friend in your life,
or a therapist, or anybody a parent, a mentor a neighbor,
(27:37):
a stranger. Sometimes it can be easier to share with
a stranger than anybody that you know. If you have
one person in your life who you feel safe enough
to really share with, then consider yourself quite lucky because
not everybody has that. And find that one person who
makes you feel safe and say, hey, could I share
with you really honestly what's been going on for me
and how I'm feeling about all of it because I
(27:58):
need to get this first draft material out so that
I have access to second draft material. I am going
to move on from here. I'm not going to stay
depressed forever. I'm not going to stay hopeless forever. I'm
not going to stay in despair forever. I'm not going
to stay at rage forever. But in order to move
to the next step, I need to really be honest
with myself and with someone else about what's really happening
for me. And that's what I need to do here.
Do you have the space for this? You know? Can
(28:20):
I kind of unload or dump for a minute and
ask permission before you do it? But yeah, find a
space where you feel safe enough that you can really
tell yourself the truth. When you tell yourself the truth,
when you write your first draft, when you have the
courage that it takes to get it down on paper,
that will give you access to your second draft. And
when you write your second draft, it gives you access
to your third draft, and your third draft gives you
(28:41):
access to your fourth draft, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And one of the mistakes that I think so many
of us make is we expect to be able to
skip over first draft and get to second, third, or fourth,
and what you end up with is a lot of
the weird, twisted self help stuff that's out there where
someone talks about, you know, thinking positive about your situation,
for example, which is a great concept and a really
(29:05):
beautiful theory, but in practice, there's no getting to the
positive framing of the story until you have admitted what's
really true. And a positive framing of a story is
never helpful unless it also includes the true details of
what actually took place. So a positive framing to a
(29:26):
story is only useful insofar as it admits what is
true inside of the story, So you should never have
to shape shift or change details of your story in
order to tell it in a positive light. If you're
having to shift the real details about what took place
in order to make your story come off as positive,
(29:47):
you're not really doing yourself or any of your reader
or anybody else any kind of service by doing that.
You're actually just rainbow washing the truth, painting over what's real,
and disconnecting yourself reality. And there's no real healing in that.
That's what I'm really getting at. There's no real healing
in denying or changing or deleting or painting over the
(30:11):
real details of your story. Any kind of true framing
to the story that makes beauty out of ashes is
going to still include all of the true details of
the story in the way that it actually took place.
So this was my epiphany. I hope it feels helpful
for you. It's been extremely helpful for me to just
(30:31):
start to notice the ways that I want to jump over.
I want to leapfrog over that first draft. And there
are so many different ways that we do this, ways
that we deny what's true in order to get what
we've decided is better, a better version of the story,
a better attitude, a better whatever, a better ending to
the story. No better ending to the story will ever
(30:54):
require you to leapfrog over the truth of where you
stand in your story right now. I'm going to say
that again, No better ending to your story will ever
require you to leap frog over the true details of
the story as you stand in them right now. In fact,
going deeper into the truth is where you're healing will
be found. That's where the better ending exists, is deeper
(31:18):
into the truth of where you are in your story
right now. So I challenge you, I invite you, I
encourage you to step into the truth of where you
are in your story right now. Tell it in the
truest possible way that you know how. Make it the
shittiest first draft that you know how to write. Whether
you're writing a manuscript, whether you're writing a journal entry,
(31:38):
whether you're just telling it to a friend or a therapist,
tell it the truest way that you know how to
tell it, because there's no such thing as a second
draft without a really shitty first draft. Thanks for listening,
and I'll see you next week on the Write Your
Story Podcast.
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the words you write, all the beauty and
piece and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story. You got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down on cold It's all about and write,
(00:24):
write your story. Write you write your story.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast.
I'm Ali Fallon. I'm your host, and on today's episode,
I want to talk about an epiphany that I had
recently while I was doing some edits on a manuscript
from one of the authors in my book in six
Months group. I've talked about this previously on an episode,
but I added a couple of bonus calls to the
calendar for my most recent group of authors working toward
(00:52):
completing their manuscripts. During these bonus calls, we did what
I call live edits, which is basically where an author
shares with me a portion or a sample of the
writing that they've been working on, and I add my
edits to the document, just like I would if I
was their developmental editor or if I were working at
the publisher and receiving the completed manuscript and then we
go over those edits together on a call as a
(01:15):
group in front of the rest of the group. It's
really cool because it's amazingly vulnerable for an author to
share their writing with me, even if we're doing this
private leave and if it's just between the two of us,
But the vulnerability and courage that it takes for one
of these aspiring authors to share their writing with me
when they know that I'm going to not only give
them constructive feedback on the writing, but I'm going to
(01:36):
do that in front of their peers. It just takes
a ton of courage for anyone to readily volunteer for
that and raise their hand, and it creates this environment
of just total trust and surrender to the experience that's
really amazing. And then everyone else who's on the call
gets to experience their feedback almost vicariously. I think you'd
(01:59):
be surprised at how often there's overlap between what I
would tell one author and what I would tell another author.
You'd think, like, oh, no, the feedback on one author's
work is going to be totally different than the feedback
you'd give to another author. And there is some of that.
There is some variation but then there are certain themes
that I find myself talking about over and over and
over again. And I shared about a few of the
(02:19):
other themes in a previous episode. But one of the
themes that I noticed coming up in our most recent
session was this idea of first draft material and second
draft material. So I want to talk about what I
mean by first draft material and second draft material. And
I also want to say that I'm going to make
an application here beyond the world of writing a manuscript.
So if writing a manuscript is not on your bucket list,
(02:42):
this episode still applies to you. And I have something
that I think that's really well, I won't say it's profound,
but something that's really helpful. At least it's been helpful
for me to share and to talk about. And I
want to use the editing idea as a metaphor. So
we're going to talk about editing a book manuscript as
a metaphor of what I think applies to the broader
(03:05):
aspects of our life. So here's what I mean by
first draft second draft material. There's certain material that shows
up in the first draft of a manuscript that just
doesn't need to carry on to the second draft. It's
just almost like as an editor, you think of this
as an immediate delete. And we talk a lot about
in my programs and with authors that I work with
(03:26):
about how the first draft of your manuscript is a
very very rough document, and An Lamott calls this your
shitty first draft. However you want to label this or
whatever word you want to use. If you like shitty
first draft, you can kind of take that from Anlama.
If you want to come up with another way to
talk about it, you're welcome to. But this is just
like the facts of the matter. I've not met anyone
who hasn't had this experience. The first draft of a
(03:48):
manuscript that comes out out from your mind onto the
page is going to be messy. It's going to be disorganized.
It is in certain parts going to have error. It's
going to have, you know, factual errors. It's going to
have parts of the story that are boring, parts of
the story that need to be be developed more, some
pieces that are in bullet points that haven't even been
(04:10):
fully developed into sentences or paragraphs yet. This is just
how the sausage is made. This is how it works
when you're writing a book or writing honestly anything. If
you're writing an article or even writing, you know, an
Instagram caption. I feel like with certain types of writing
there's a little bit more leniency or understanding that it
can be just kind of like rough, you know, on
Instagram caption. You're not going to maybe spend a ton
(04:32):
of time editing it, or maybe you do. But with
a book manuscript, something that's going to go into print
and exist in that form forever, there are rounds and
rounds and rounds and rounds of edits you do. And
by the time you get to that final version, the
version of the manuscript that you're going to, you know,
hit publish on, send it to the publisher, put it
(04:52):
on the printed page, get it on the bookshelf. That
version of the book is dramatically different than the first
version that you put down. And yet here's the part
that I want to emphasize today. Without that first version
of the draft, you don't get to the fifteenth version,
you don't get to the fiftieth version. There's no pathway
to that final version without the first version. So the
(05:12):
first version is absolutely necessary, as messy as it is,
as embarrassing as it can be to share it as
much as you read back after the first version and
you go like, oh, this is not what I wanted
to make. It's not what I wanted to create. I
know I'm a better writer than this. I know I have,
you know, something more to say than what's currently here
on the page. It's a necessary evil. It's a part
(05:33):
of the process. It has to exist. It's like the
clay that you're working with, the raw materials that you
need in order to get to the finished base. And
so recognizing that there are these two things, there's this
first draft that has to come into form. It's not
going to be great. It's not going to be representative
of the quality of writing that you know you can do,
(05:53):
or the quality of the book that you know you
want to write. And yet it's a necessary evil. It
has to exist in order for you to get to
finished product. There's a difference, and there's a disconnect between
first draft and second draft. We all want to get
to the second draft and the third, and the fourth
and the fifth. We want to get to that final
draft that we can share with the world and be
super proud of. But if we want to get there,
(06:14):
we have to start with first draft material. Now, I
found myself saying over and over again to a couple
of different authors that I was working with, as I'm
editing their first draft, I say, this is not second
draft material. And sometimes what I mean by that is
this part of the story is really boring. For example,
sometimes you know, we include details in the first draft
(06:35):
of a manuscript that just are not that interesting to
the reader, And a lot of times people worry about this.
When you're writing a manuscript, you think like, oh gosh,
is this interesting to the reader. And I always tell
writers that I'm working with the only way for me
to know if it's interesting to the reader is for
you to put it in the first draft, and then
I can decide, as your editor, does this belong in
the first draft or should it be cut before the
(06:57):
second draft. And there's no shortcutting this, there's no way
to jump around this. It has to go in the
first draft. I cannot edit something that doesn't exist, and
so you have to just kind of put everything in
the first draft. And then there is a lot that
goes in the first draft that gets cut before the
second draft. So that's just one example that there are
things that are maybe like not that interesting to the reader,
(07:17):
are not applicable to the story, don't line up with
the controlling idea. Another element that oftentimes goes in first
draft that gets deleted before second draft would be things
like scaffolding, Like you might say something for the sake
of helping yourself understand the story. You might say like,
I'm going to walk you through this step by step
or something like that, and that line may get cut
(07:40):
between first draft and second draft. It might be something
that you needed to say as scaffolding for yourself to
help yourself understand the organization of the story, but it
is not necessary for the reader. It's just can be
kind of assumed on the reader's part and doesn't need
to be stated directly. It's two on the nose or whatever,
and so it can get deleted before the second draft. Well,
one of the things I started to think of, as
(08:01):
I heard myself saying this over and over and over again,
is that there's first draft material, there's second draft material,
and there's third draft material, and they're different. You know,
a third draft of a manuscript looks very different than
the first draft, but that there's this necessary evil of
the first draft. I started to think about how applicable
this is to our lives. Let me bridge this gap
(08:22):
for you a little bit. What I started to think
about is how often we say things like, well, I
just want to be positive about this situation. This is
just one example of how this shows up in our lives.
When something's happening too in your life and you really
just want to see this through a positive lens. You
want to stay positive because everybody loves to stay positive
and it's a nice thing to do. And I've been
told that being positive is great, So I just want
(08:44):
to stay positive about this situation. I've been taught and
told that, you know, staying positive is a good thing
to do. And so when I tell the story to myself,
when I tell it to other people, I kind of
tell the story at third draft material. I tell the
story through a positive lens, in a positive light. And
while this makes sense and is great, it sometimes jumps
(09:06):
over or skips over what I would call first draft material.
That anytime we're working through a story, and let me
back up for just a second here, because I feel
like it's important to say one of the main reasons
that I love teaching people to tell their own stories,
to write about events that happen in their life. Is
because writing about your life is an amazing way to
(09:29):
metabolize what has taken place for you. To me, this
is the number one reason to write your story. There
are infinite other reasons to write your story, publishing being
one of them, but the number one reason that I
would say every person should write their story is because
it's an incredible way to metabolize and integrate what has
taken place for you. And this metabolization takes place in
(09:50):
a step by step kind of process, like a predictable
unfolding of events. And there's like stage one, just like
draft one. The first time that you sit down to
tell a story is the rawest, most guttural version of
the story. And that version of the story is messy.
(10:11):
It's unpredictable, it's chaotic, it doesn't always have a through
line or a controlling idea or it is there, but
you haven't really, you know, nailed it yet. You don't
really know exactly what it is. You're not following that
unequivocally yet. It's unclear what the story is about, what
the purpose of the story is. The moral of the
story is unclear. It's just kind of the story in
(10:33):
its most raw state. It is a shitty first draft. Now,
even if we're not talking about a draft that we're
planning to publish, just go with me here on the metaphor.
This is what I'm trying to get at. Is that
the first time that you try to tell a story
or talk about something that's taken place for you, it's
going to be first draft material. It's going to be
from the hip, raw, guttural, just disorganized, chaotic, just the
(10:56):
way that it happened, the way that it fell on
you at the time. And a lot of what shows
up in this first draft is so important, like so
important to the healing process of writing, absolutely vital. You
cannot live without this first draft. And yet the first
draft can be really vulnerable, like the most vulnerable form
(11:19):
of the writing that there is incredibly chaotic, confusing, It
can stir up a lot of feelings and emotions, and
so we would rather skip the first draft and move
straight to second draft or third draft. The problem is,
there's no such thing as skipping the first draft. And
maybe that's what this episode should be called. There's no
such thing as skipping the first draft. You cannot whether
(11:40):
you're talking about a piece of writing that you're going
to publish, or whether you're talking about a story that's
unfolding in your life that you would like to upgrade
the moral of, or move to the next level of,
or really integrate it into your life, or really metabolize
it and better understand what the story was here to
teach you. There's no such thing as skipping the first draft.
You just say simply cannot do it. I think a
(12:10):
lot of us really long to skip this first draft.
We wish that there was a way to skip the
first draft, because entering into that first draft can be unsettling,
deeply unsettling, and it also can be embarrassing and kind
of shame inducing, because that first draft of the story
is not all locked down yet. It's a feeling of
(12:30):
like my ducks are not in a row. I do
not understand what this story is about. The moral of
the story is unclear to me at this point. What
the story is about is unclear to me at this point.
And even some of the details of the story are
told in such a way where part of me can
recognize that I'm not really thinking positive about this, and
yet that version of the story where you're just shooting
(12:52):
from the hip is the very foundation that a brilliant
and beautiful story is built upon. And so this is
what this episode is about. And this is the epiphany
that I had that I wanted to share with you
in whatever way that this might be helpful, is that
first draft cannot be skipped. And if when it comes
time to tell your story, whether you're writing it down
(13:12):
so you can publish it, or whether you're writing it
for yourself, or you're just learning to tell a story
to yourself in a more interesting way, or the story
to loved ones, or whatever, however you're going about telling
your story, if you're trying to leap frog over the
first draft, you're going to miss everything that the story
has to show you. I'll tell you an example that
(13:34):
I've talked about before on social media, and I've talked
about it briefly here on the podcast, but I'll just
share the example here so that you can kind of
get a sense of what I'm talking about. When I
sat down to write Indestructible, which was the second book
that I had ever written. It's a memoir about leaving
an abusive and toxic relationship and finding my way on
the other side of that experience. When I sat down
(13:54):
to write the first draft of that book, I didn't
know that it was a book I was going to publish.
I thought I was just writing about my experience in
order to heal from it, and healing from it is
exactly what I got. But when I sat down to
write the first draft of that experience, I was still
living in it. I was not divorced yet, I was
in process of getting divorced. I was still getting really
(14:16):
hooked and triggered by this person who I had been
in a toxic dynamic with for years. I was still
really sad and depressed about the ways that my life
was falling apart. I hadn't made any sense of the
story yet. I didn't really know whose fault this was,
or how did this happen, or how did we even
get here. I think I was still playing the victim
in certain ways. I was still really angry and bitter.
(14:38):
I had so many different elements going on. When I
sat down to write the manuscript, I wrote out the
entire manuscript, which in my mind was not a manuscript.
It was just the story of what took place in
my life from start to finish. And when I finished
that document. I went back to go reread what I
had written, and instantly by habit because I I already been
(15:00):
working and publishing for several years at that point, I
had my editor's lens on, and as I went back
to go reread this story through my editor's lens, my
heart sunk and my stomach sunk because I realized number one,
this story was not going to be interesting to anyone,
that no one would have any interest in reading this
story as it stood, and as I was living it,
(15:20):
it was so gripping and interesting and dramatic and chaotic
and fascinating, and all these things were happening. It felt
like I was living in this movie. Well, when I
put it on the page and I went back to
go read it, I was like, oh, this is not
coming off the page in the way that I experienced
it in my life. And so there was that level,
There was that understanding that as an editor, this would
(15:42):
not be a story I would pass on to the
next level and say like, let's get this book published.
And then on a human level, I was also reading
the story thinking to myself, this narrator, this woman who's
writing this story, I'm not that invested in her I
don't really like her that much. She seems kind of bitter,
she seems a little bit like whiny. She's not really
(16:05):
taking control of her own life. She's not really like
engaged in trying to shape this story. She's just sort
of standing back as if this horrible thing has been
happening to her and how could you know? How could
this be? And what is she going to do moving forward?
And I just didn't really I wasn't endeared to her
as the hero of the story. And it's weird to
say that about yourself talking about yourself and the third person,
(16:27):
but I genuinely had this out of body experience, like
I don't like this woman. I don't want to be
friends with her. I'm not cheering her on from the
other side of things. And then I had the epiphany
that I needed to move this from first draft to
second draft. And I wouldn't have necessarily used that language
at the time, but it was like, Okay, if I
were going to make this story interesting without changing any
(16:49):
of the details, because I'm not going to lie about
what happened, but if I were going to change the
way that this story was written, how would I do that?
And one of the things that I did, was I
really upgraded the narrator voice. Now, narrator voice is the
voice of the hero at the end of the story,
after everything has happened, looking back and telling the story
(17:10):
with omniscient perspective. So basically, think of this like you
telling a story about something that happened years ago in
your life. Now you see it from all the different angles.
You understand what took place and all who all the
players were, and what happened. At the time, you didn't
know what was going on, but now you know what
was going on, and so you can speak about the
story differently. You speak about the story from a thirty
(17:33):
thousand foot view. That's the narrator's voice, and the narrator's
voice is present in the story to promise the reader
that a transformation is coming, because the reader needs to
know we've got a character in the story who's in
a pit right now. They're up against a problem that
they don't know how to solve. The reader needs a
sense that that character, that hero of the story, is
(17:55):
going to change. They're going to transform so dramatically that
by the end of the story not even going to
recognize them. And in order to remind the reader that
that change is coming. The narrator voice comes in, so
you hear both the narrator voice and you witness the
hero taking action on the stage or on the screen
or whatever. The tension between those two voices is what
(18:17):
shows you the arc of a story. So you see
that a transition is coming, You see that a change
is coming, and you see the hero in the hole
up against their unsolvable problem, and the open story loop
is inevitably how does she get from there to there?
And so what I had to do when I came
to the first draft of Indestructible was think through what
(18:39):
I wanted the narrator voice to sound like. And I
really realized as I was reading through the first draft
that I wanted the narrator voice to be a couple
of things. I wanted the transformed version of the hero
to feel confident and to take charge of her own
life and to stop blaming other people for her problems.
And I really wanted her to chew oose to feel
(19:02):
positive about this set of circumstances. In other words, to
say like, this is a horrible thing that happened to me,
but I'm going to take it in stride and I'm
gonna make it, you know, into something really beautiful for
my life. And that was second draft material. It wasn't
available to me in the first draft. It couldn't have
been available to me in the first draft. But without
(19:22):
the first draft, I never could have gotten to second draft,
and without the second draft, I never could have gotten
to third draft. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. On
down the line and indestructible. The book would never have
been published in the way that it was if I
didn't write that first freaking bad draft, that shitty first draft.
That was not just only messy from the standpoint of
you know, the editor who I finally sent the manuscript too,
(19:46):
was saying, like, the timeline's confusing, Like you're jumping around
a little bit, I can't quite follow you. So it
was messy and confusing from that standpoint. But also the
hero of a story wasn't really acting super heroic, so
you weren't endeared to her as a character, And you know,
she was sort of complaining and whining about her life
and blaming all her problems on other people, and so
she just wasn't a sympathetic character. You didn't want to like,
(20:08):
cheer her on from the sidelines. And what I had
to do is insert a new narrator voice, a new
version of me that I hadn't accessed yet, who was
all those things, who was confident. You know, at the
time of my divorce, when I was filing for divorce
and going through the worst situation that I had ever
been in my life to that date, and experiencing all
(20:30):
the pain and the heartbreak and coming to terms with
what was real versus the way I had thought things
would be, that version of me was really broken. She
wasn't confident at all, she didn't feel positive about her future.
And yet I had to decide, this is the person
that I'm going to become. I'm going to become someone
who's confident, who takes charge of her own life, who
(20:52):
is the architect of her own existence, who puts one
foot in front of the other, even when things don't
go the way that I expect, even when things feel
really challenging and hard, even when I'm wronged, even when
there's an injustice. I choose to make the most out
of every situation that's given to me. And I remember
one of my mantras during the time was every single
thing that happens to me in my life is an
(21:14):
opportunity to learn. And I would repeat that to myself
over and over again, and my narrator became that woman,
the woman who really truly believes in every fiber of
her being, that every single thing that happens to me
in my life is an opportunity to learn. But the
only way that she could become the narrator is because
I chose to write that shitty first draft. Is because
(21:34):
I put that shitty first draft on the page. And
I was thinking about this as I was editing manuscripts
the past couple weeks, about what a tremendous act of
courage it is to put that shitty first draft down
on paper. It's an active courage, even if you don't
ever share that with anyone, you know, it's so courageous
for the folks in my group who share that first
(21:56):
draft with the whole group, just unfiltered and unedited. Even
to be able to share that quote first draft of
your story with yourself, where you are radically, radically honest
with yourself about what has taken place, about how that
makes you feel, about what that brings up for you
about what it triggers, about what you genuinely, truly feel
(22:17):
in the moment. It is so challenging to be that
honest with ourselves. We are so in touch with what
we want the story to become that sometimes we miss
that we can never get to where we want to
go if we don't admit where we are now. And
I started to think about how this applies to my
current situation, which I've talked about at length and in
(22:38):
detail in the past season of this podcast. And I've
belabored the point long enough, and I won't go back
into all of the details, but I've talked about how
my husband and I have been in a long season
of struggle, especially around career and finances, and we've been
trying to find our way and find our place. And
I think one of the things I've realized is that
I've had a very hard time being radically honest with
(23:01):
myself about the first draft of this story. This podcast
recording last season in particular, has helped me to get
radically honest, because what the heck do I have to lose.
I'm just here, you know, rambling to myself in a
(23:22):
room alone into a micro vote and hopefully like, you know,
ten people are listening. I know at least a handful
of you are listening, because I do hear from you.
But I've just been kind of reiterating the story to myself,
telling it in a very first draft kind of way,
thinking to myself like, oh gosh, how does this make
me sound? This isn't really the type of podcast that's
going to like elicit hundreds of thousands of listeners. It's
(23:44):
not the thing that's going to help me kind of
climb the ladder or get the most you know, the
biggest show or the most amount of money or whatever,
build my platform, build my career. It's just me shooting
from the hip, giving you first draft material about what's
been taking place in my life and being courageous enough
to show up and be honest about it, like really
brutally honest that it's been frustrating, and it's been really hard,
(24:06):
and I've had a hard time understanding what the heck
is going on, and it's felt unfair at times, and
all the other stuff that I've shared, it's first draft material,
and I just suddenly started to realize, you know, it
can be so challenging to show up with our first
draft material, to really bear our souls to those around us,
and to admit that I'm not where I want to be.
I don't feel overwhelmingly positive about my situation. I have
(24:29):
lacked confidence in many aspects of this whole unfolding experience
that's been that's taken place over the course of the
last five years. I've lacked confidence. I haven't known how
to put one foot in front of the other. I
feel like I have felt at points like, Okay, we've
tried everything. I don't know what else to try. And
that's first draft material. And in order to get to
(24:49):
second draft, the second draft where I want to say
I'm going to be the architect of my own life,
I'm going to choose to remain confident and positive about
what's unfolding in the future in front of me, despite
the fact that things haven't gone the way that I planned.
That second draft material doesn't even become available to me
until the first draft exists. And so here is my
(25:11):
admonition and suggestion to you. If it feels like it
fits for you, I want to just encourage you to
be willing and be brave and be courageous enough to
get your first draft down and this doesn't have to
mean that you're writing a book manuscript. In fact, in
many cases it won't mean that. Maybe it means that
(25:31):
you just kind of journal out what's been taking place
and how you really feel about it. Okay, the really
real way that you feel, not the way that you
think other people want you to say that you feel,
not the way that you know in therapy speak, that
you feel, but the really real way that you feel
about this set of circumstances. Tell Us if you're mad,
tell us if you're sad, tell us if you're devastated,
(25:53):
tell us if you're hopeless, tell us if you're in despair,
if you feel depressed, whatever you feel, however you see it,
whatever is going on for you, just say it the
way that it's true, that it's most true for you
right now, in this moment. And let me tell you
something so brilliant about writing your story is that what
is true for you right now does not stay true,
(26:14):
especially as you admit the truth. It's almost like saying
the truth saying I'm angry, I want out, I don't
want to do this anymore, I am miserable, I'm exhausted. Whatever,
speaking your truth helps the truth to move and to
transform into something new, into a brand new truth where
you have more access to more strength, or more confidence,
(26:34):
or more courage or whatever helps you move from first
draft material to second draft material, so that you now
have access to the second draft. You didn't have access
to it before because you have to start with first draft.
So I want to give you this encouragement, this admonition,
this benediction to begin with the first draft. And maybe
for you that's a book manuscript. Maybe for you it's
(26:55):
a journal entry. Maybe for you it's not like physical
writing at all. It's like literally just calling up a
friend and being like, listen, do you have the space
for me to dump a little bit, because I need
to dump about how upset I truly am. I haven't
really been able to be honest with myself or with
anyone else, and I need to just I just need
to vent. I just need to talk about how truly
(27:16):
upset and frustrated that I am and find a place
where it's safe enough to share your first draft. It
is no small act of courage to be willing to
share your first draft material with yourself, let alone with
anyone else. If you have even one friend in your life,
or a therapist, or anybody a parent, a mentor a neighbor,
(27:37):
a stranger. Sometimes it can be easier to share with
a stranger than anybody that you know. If you have
one person in your life who you feel safe enough
to really share with, then consider yourself quite lucky because
not everybody has that. And find that one person who
makes you feel safe and say, hey, could I share
with you really honestly what's been going on for me
and how I'm feeling about all of it because I
(27:58):
need to get this first draft material out so that
I have access to second draft material. I am going
to move on from here. I'm not going to stay
depressed forever. I'm not going to stay hopeless forever. I'm
not going to stay in despair forever. I'm not going
to stay at rage forever. But in order to move
to the next step, I need to really be honest
with myself and with someone else about what's really happening
for me. And that's what I need to do here.
Do you have the space for this? You know? Can
(28:20):
I kind of unload or dump for a minute and
ask permission before you do it? But yeah, find a
space where you feel safe enough that you can really
tell yourself the truth. When you tell yourself the truth,
when you write your first draft, when you have the
courage that it takes to get it down on paper,
that will give you access to your second draft. And
when you write your second draft, it gives you access
to your third draft, and your third draft gives you
(28:41):
access to your fourth draft, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And one of the mistakes that I think so many
of us make is we expect to be able to
skip over first draft and get to second, third, or fourth,
and what you end up with is a lot of
the weird, twisted self help stuff that's out there where
someone talks about, you know, thinking positive about your situation,
for example, which is a great concept and a really
(29:05):
beautiful theory, but in practice, there's no getting to the
positive framing of the story until you have admitted what's
really true. And a positive framing of a story is
never helpful unless it also includes the true details of
what actually took place. So a positive framing to a
(29:26):
story is only useful insofar as it admits what is
true inside of the story, So you should never have
to shape shift or change details of your story in
order to tell it in a positive light. If you're
having to shift the real details about what took place
in order to make your story come off as positive,
(29:47):
you're not really doing yourself or any of your reader
or anybody else any kind of service by doing that.
You're actually just rainbow washing the truth, painting over what's real,
and disconnecting yourself reality. And there's no real healing in that.
That's what I'm really getting at. There's no real healing
in denying or changing or deleting or painting over the
(30:11):
real details of your story. Any kind of true framing
to the story that makes beauty out of ashes is
going to still include all of the true details of
the story in the way that it actually took place.
So this was my epiphany. I hope it feels helpful
for you. It's been extremely helpful for me to just
(30:31):
start to notice the ways that I want to jump over.
I want to leapfrog over that first draft. And there
are so many different ways that we do this, ways
that we deny what's true in order to get what
we've decided is better, a better version of the story,
a better attitude, a better whatever, a better ending to
the story. No better ending to the story will ever
(30:54):
require you to leapfrog over the truth of where you
stand in your story right now. I'm going to say
that again, No better ending to your story will ever
require you to leap frog over the true details of
the story as you stand in them right now. In fact,
going deeper into the truth is where you're healing will
be found. That's where the better ending exists, is deeper
(31:18):
into the truth of where you are in your story
right now. So I challenge you, I invite you, I
encourage you to step into the truth of where you
are in your story right now. Tell it in the
truest possible way that you know how. Make it the
shittiest first draft that you know how to write. Whether
you're writing a manuscript, whether you're writing a journal entry,
(31:38):
whether you're just telling it to a friend or a therapist,
tell it the truest way that you know how to
tell it, because there's no such thing as a second
draft without a really shitty first draft. Thanks for listening,
and I'll see you next week on the Write Your
Story Podcast.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com