Dirty Water

I'm multi-tasking today because 1. I'm busy. And 2. it seems that lately I've been hearing from a lot of people who think that finishing a novel is all they have to do.

Don't get me wrong, finishing a draft of a novel is hard. Monumentally, freakishly, totally hard.

But the work...the REAL work isn't writing a book. The real work is RE-writing the book.

Look, I know every writer is different, and I can't tell you how every other author works, but I can tell you that I've never met a single one who would ever consider stopping at just one draft.

That's why when the good folks of the National Novel Writing Month's Young Writers program asked me to write a little pep talk to everyone who is finishing up their NaNo projects, I didn't have to think long about what to write, because for me being a professional writer is all about the dirty water.

So here it is, gang, my NaNo pep talk.

Enjoy!

-Ally

DIRTY WATER
by Ally Carter

Hi guys! The great folks here at NaNoWriMo have asked me to write you a letter about some of the important lessons that I’ve learned about this crazy business…and that got me to thinking: what is the most important lesson I’ve learned about writing?

And, amazingly, the answer was pretty simple: I’ve learned the importance of the dirty water.

Have you ever worked in a yard or a garden? Or…more specifically…have you ever used a garden hose that hasn’t been used in a long time? Well, if you have, you probably already know that when you turn on a hose that hasn’t been used in weeks or months, the first water you get is going to be dirty—filthy in fact—full of cobwebs and gravel and the corpses of very large insects. The first stuff out of the hose is going to be the dirty water, and the only way to get to the good stuff is to let the water run.

The first things I ever wrote were screenplays. They were bad—laughably, embarrassingly, terribly bad. They were my dirty water stories. They were clogging up the hose, stuck inside my subconscious, and the only way to get them out of my system was to write them. To learn from them. To let the water run.

I’m now working on my sixth book, so some might think that my dirty water days are behind me, but guess again. For me, every book starts out with dirty water—scenes that don’t work; characters that come off flat; lines of dialogue that are just outright bad. I used to think that I could save myself a lot of time and trouble by carefully crafting a first draft, but for me it never works that way. First drafts are always dirty water. In short, they’re always bad. So now—six books later—all I can do is let the water run each and every time I start a book, and the longer it runs, the more drafts I go through and the harder I work, the better the book is going to get.

When I was in high school I started dozens of books, but I never made it past the first page or two because inevitably I’d look at my two pages of dirty water and compare it against the books that I loved and I’d always end up heartbroken. How could I possibly write something that good? Who did I think I was? Why would anyone want to read my book when there are so many better books in the world?

But that was before I knew about dirty water—that you should never compare your rough draft against someone else’s final draft. I can promise you that all books start out as rough drafts—as dirty water—and you shouldn’t expect your book to be any different.

National Novel Writing Month is almost over, but as you finish up your projects, don’t ask yourself if your book is any good or not. Don’t think about whether or not it will ever be published. The most important thing you can ask yourself is “Did I have fun?” If the answer is yes, then…you’re a writer. Pure and simple.

And if you’re a writer, that means you also have to be a re-writer. That means you embrace the dirty water. You keep working on this story and then you start something new. You write and rewrite and write some more.

That means you let the water run.