Bad Before Good
What writing fiction has taught me about falling down, getting up, and celebrating the bad drafts
There’s a piece of advice I hear myself repeatedly dispensing to my teen these days, “You gotta risk being bad at something in order to get good.”
Some variation of this advice has existed for eons, passed down from parent to child, coach to player, mentor to mentee, and yet it never dulls in its relevance, not to mention its constant applicability. Still, it can be a tough pill to swallow.
These days, it’s the advice I give myself when I stare down at a busted, incoherent sentence that, somewhere within the deep, inaccessible recesses of my brain, exists beautiful and fully formed. (Damn is it frustrating to recognize good writing when you’re sitting in a pile of your sludge!)
Getting good at a skill isn’t easy. It requires discipline, motivation, and persistence. Most importantly, it demands the fortitude to endure being “bad” at first. It’s a process that requires permission - the permission to fall down. A lot. I’m learning to grant myself that permission as I navigate the leap from nonfiction to fiction writing.
Before I was struck by some wayward literary lightning bolt a few years back, my only foray into fiction writing was two memorable stories I published in grade school. One involved a girl moving to a new town and discovering a key hidden in a brick wall (cue Secret Garden vibes). The other was Babysitters Club fan fiction, the plot line of which I later discovered had already been published (I guess Kristy and the gang going to Disney World wasn’t all that original of an idea).
But between that generative fifth-grade year and now, I’ve been an avid fiction reader. Which is why, I assumed (wrongly), that writing fiction would be a natural pivot. After all, how hard is it to tell a story?
A good one? Very.
A few months back, I was interviewed on an episode of The S**t No One Tells You About Writing. The host, fabulous author Bianca Marais (whose books you really must go read!) ended our conversation with something to the effect of, “Now that you’ve tackled the hardest genre (memoir), fiction will be a breeze!”
Ha, Bianca. Joke is on us.
After writing the first draft of my novel-in-progress, I took a step back and waited. I expected a feeling similar to the triumph of finishing my memoir, the kind of satisfaction one derives from a perfect gift-wrapping job, all tight corners and symmetrical bows.
But nothing.
The lack of oomph, the lack of hell yes, the lack of damn, I’m good, signaled to me instead that, no, what I’d written wasn’t very good. I had baked a loaf of bread but forgotten the yeast. I was missing something critical.
With zero idea about what that missing ingredient might be, I enrolled myself in the first adult writing class of my life at The Writer’s Center. Surely a group of strangers could tell me how to fix my bad draft!
And they did. Sort of.
During that course, I shared 15 pages of my bad first draft and no one laughed me out of the room or gazed upon me with pity. They asked questions. They probed. They got me peering down hallways and corridors I didn’t know existed, trying to determine what kind of story I was trying to write. But they didn’t offer me a singular solution to my problem. Mostly, they got me wondering, “What is good writing?” and “How do you make it?”
It’s an inquiry I’ll forever be chasing.
A friend recently asked me my thoughts on sharing work and I’m grateful to be the kind of person who doesn’t have qualms about putting my words in front of others’ eyes. I wasn’t always that person, of course, but now that I’ve survived several workshop experiences, I trust in the kindness of others and in my own durable skin. By approaching these moments with permission to fail, I know I can walk away smarter and closer to where I’m trying to go.
After all, there’s a critical difference between being bad at a skill and being a bad person. It’s when we conflate the two that trying new things becomes an unfathomable risk. Growth is contingent upon delineating between what we can do and who we are. I first learned this as a caregiver helping to rehabilitate my husband after brain injury, and have made it a guiding philosophy ever since.
It’s worth repeating: Our process of learning is not a reflection of our worth.
(At least, that’s what I keep telling my kid. And I owe it to practice what I preach.)
In addition to being necessary and completely unavoidable, bad drafts also make wonderful lampposts, illuminating how far we’ve come.
An example: When I first sat down to write fiction, I knew nothing about “headhopping" (jumping back and forth between characters’ internal thinking). In fact, I don’t think I was even familiar with the acronym “POV” (point-of-view), let alone the variety of options available to a writer: first-person, second-person, third-person omniscient, third-person limited, etc.
All I knew was that I had a story, a story that wanted to be told, and a pretty sturdy idea of the characters who should tell it. (Not bad!) So, I dove in.
When it comes to writing fiction, I’ve learned a lot in the past few years. Some of it via educational opportunities like workshops and seminars. Some of it from reading craft books and studying great novels. But a great, invaluable part is owed to the act of simply doing it. Learning from my own mistakes.
I don’t know a single writer (or working artist) who doesn’t employ growth mindset in their work. We may not be where we want to yet, but we only get there by navigating the muddy middle, bad draft by bad draft.
Growth Mindset Inspiration
If you’re science-minded and need a foundation from which to tackle growth-mindset/neuroplasticity, start with these seminal texts:
MINDSET by Carol Dweck & GRIT by Angela Duckworth
Need a more personal nudge? Check out this story about a young man who taught himself to read and then challenged himself to read 100 books in 2023.