I Heart Second Drafts

A year ago, a writer I was working with wrote a hilarious, poignant, wild first draft about a family vacation and after addressing some of the notes that came up in our editorial discussion, she felt ready to embark on the second draft.

I realized then that I had never really spelled out for anyone what the work of the second draft actually is or in what order - possibly - it should go. So I did for her and I am sharing with you my dear readers.

Before we get there, I should mention that the first draft is sometimes called “a vomit draft.” Anne Lamott encourages “shitty first drafts.” A writer I know thinks of it as his “madman” draft. Whether you think of it as puke, poop or insanity - charming! - what you should have at the end of a first draft is clay that you now get to sculpt in a second draft. Writing that first draft, you probably had to will yourself and trick yourself and cajole yourself and soothe yourself just to get ass in chair and generate material to the page and tolerate it being messy or not very good, not very clear. It can sometimes be an exciting, cathartic process, it can sometimes be rather obsessive and crazed, it can be lonely and dislocated like where the hell am I and what I am doing, and it can also be tedious, a push. No matter what it is almost always very tiring. When I’m generating new material I often need a nap afterwards.

But second drafts? I love second drafts. It’s where 90% of the rewards and delights of writing happen. My piece starts to take shape. My instincts fire away. Shitty sentences become better sentences. Jokes occur to me, then get funnier. The first draft keeps kind of whining to me I don’t really know what this is while the second draft says This is going to be something decent and I am going to finish.

Here’s a guide to second draft work, in the order I think it ought to go:

# 1:

Are there places in your piece that you kind of know are still underwritten? Write them out. Write long.

#2:

Conjure a handful people, different backgrounds, ages, genders, who are smart and tender, and would happily devour your writing but do not know you, they have never seen what you or your characters or your locations look like and they have no idea where you’re from and what you’ve been through. Walk through your first draft slowly and put in any info that they might need so that they see people and settings vividly and so they are not tripped up or lost. Sometimes it helps to think cinematically - each scene, what’s the wide shot, what are the close ups? Do your readers - the ones who don’t know you personally, the ones who just met you when they read your first sentence - do they understand the timeline(s) of your story? Eliminate confusion (unless you’re intentionally using confusion). This is really the shift that happens from the first to the second draft - back then you were just going and going and going and part venting and part releasing and part sharing and now you’re taking care of your readers, now you’re intuiting what readers need and delivering it, now you’re entertaining them, now you’re manipulating their experience and their minds and their emotions.

#3:

Take a walk. Take some notes on the ride you want to take the reader with this story. The mood you want to set at the beginning, the places you want to take them emotionally and intellectually as you go, and the build you’re going for, and the surprising place (surprising to them) where you want to land them. Now look closely at your beginning and your ending to make sure they’re doing what you want them to do. Making sure they are as strong as they can possibly be. And then look at everything in the middle to see if you need to tweak and rewrite and refine your way to the ride you intend to take readers on. Have you created tension and held them there, escalating, wandering, releasing, and then escalating some more? That’s your job, to tend to the flow, to tend to the grip.

#4:

Read your piece out loud. Pretend some imaginary audience is there. Do you have spaces and pauses when you needed them as a reader? Are you happy with the pacing? Are there sentences that were murder to read that probably need clarifying or simplifying? Adjust accordingly. You’ll sort out rhythm and pacing and pausing issues.

#5

Are there moments that could be funnier if you tweaked language and worked on how they landed? Make every funny moment as funny as it can be.

#6

Did you use any cliches or predictable descriptions that would be better off with more specific, original words and images? Go through the story sentence for sentence, adjust accordingly, and then reread. Some of those new choices might be worse and pretentious and you’ll switch em back but some of the new choices will be great and you’ll get little endorphin hits.

#7

The true heart of this piece of writing - the ache you most want to convey, the point you want to make, the reason you wrote the damn thing in the first place — is it fully vividly in the piece? Adjust accordingly.

#8

Be ready to notate the downloads from the universe. Because the realm of the second draft is a realm where some parts of your unconscious, and some parts of the heavens who look after writers and their writings, are very, very activated, and you are likely to receive little idea parcels that are perfect, that will blow your mind, when you wake up or when you’re out with friends or whatever. Don’t toss these parcels by being a ding-a-ling who doesn’t take notes.

#9

Punctuation. Spelling. Grammar. Before you show it to anyone, clean it up.

And at the point where you’ve made all of the changes and improvements you want to make, it’s probably time to start showing the piece to readers you trust, and the process of the third draft begins.

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Out and About

• I heartily recommend the Keith Haring show at the Brandt Foundation. It’s a feast, in a stunning building. Have coffee at Abraco afterwards. Or Udon at Raku.

• Did you love How To With John Wilson as much as I did? He’s doing a live podcast taping of Doom Scrolling as part of the Whitney Biennial on 3/22.

• There’s an ongoing Agnes Varda retrospective at Film Forum. I went Sunday night to see Cleo from 5-7. Loved the ramble through Paris, the silliness and genuine lovelorness, the trick of the time structure. And I loved being in a dark room with a bunch of adults who love Agnes Varda.

• The New Museum re-opens this weekend. Giant renovation and expansion after nearly two years. I’m excited to see it.

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Another Week, Another Rabbit Hole

Two songs explore a similar moment in the trajectory of man-woman-bed - where the woman tells the man that too much bullshit has happened, it’s too late to repair and she’s out. But who did it better, Jojo or Carole King? This one is so generational and I’m gonna shock all the oldsters here by being Team Jojo. Carole’s not angry enough about this fraught, exhausting situation. She’s still taking care of the guy. Jojo nails it - she’s pissed and she’s done!

Here’s the Carole King version.

Here’s the Jojo version.

I’ll put it to a poll:

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All paintings by Dike Blair whose work is on view at Karma in Chelsea.

I’m taking next week, March 23rd, off because on that day I turn 50! Ladies, don’t be afraid of aging. I am happier, healthier, cuter, closer to my loved ones and more fulfilled by my work than I have ever been. Opportunities abound. I hope I live to 130.

Thank you for reading and thanks especially to my paying subscribers who keep this free for all.

I will leave you with this gem.

My favorite exchange:

George: I don’t regret a single moment. No, I don’t.

Aretha: I know you don’t.

George: Looking back, when I think of all those disappointments? I just laugh.

Aretha: I know you do!

George: I just laugh!

xo Lizzie

PS - Want to write? I hope you’ll join one of my upcoming memoir and personal essay classes on Zoom. For more info and to register, visit my website here.