Writing advice comes “a dime a dozen”, whether it’s from teachers, peers or social media, but only so much of it actually sticks. Not everything will work for you and the real skill is figuring out what does and how it fits you best. You’re really tailoring advice to make your best writer’s outfit.
One of my favourite pieces of advice is to “make it messy first”.
I don’t know why so many of us know that “practice makes perfect” but can’t get it to reconcile with innate selves. A draft is supposed to be that, a draft. It’s practice for the final manuscript. But for some reason, we often feel like it need to be right in one go. The sooner you train your mentality away from that, the better.
When I worked in publishing, I read submission after submission, manuscript after manuscript. There was only one instance where I reviewed a manuscript and only needed to line-edit it; almost no notes at all. One. It is much more normal to start with something patchy than something incredibly clean. And mind you, I never new which iteration of a submission I was reading but there were almost always improvements and edits to be made. Everything can always be more polished because it’s through these continuous reviews that you can carefully iron out every wrinkle and crease. Gemstones takes years in water to soften into something smooth and shiny, and even if you use a tumbler, it takes multiple sessions over multiple days. Let it be messy!
Even if it’s a mess, even if it’s almost written like a script and is the bare bones of a novel, you wrote something. Getting caught up over it not be ready to write simply means that you write nothing.
There are a couple of things I do to keep engaged with this writing tip:
- make scene lists in dot-points
- make the bare bones of it
- it’s not novel writing but it’ll get the ideas out and give you a guide later to write with
- use place markers for names; there’s always time to come back later!
- this I learned from reading Webtoons. Often in place of a famous company or brand it’s written as “Company A”. This has been incredibly helpful for me when I get stuck for place or person names and so the characters all become a letter based on their personality and then I come back for a name later. Names are usually the least of my worries but sometimes nothing feels right and so instead of letting it stall the progression of my writing, I call them “A” or “B” until the name is ready
- love your darlings
- be “cringe”. You know the scene is more self-gratification than anything and will probably be cut later but write it anyway. Write it all! Often there will be something salvageable, but you can’t salvage anything from nothing
- make a motivation routine
- set the stage for writing!
Making it “messy” first also has another benefit for me. Sometimes I get so caught up in the need to have worldbuilding, character development and plot timeline down to every point that I forget that those things often create themselves organically as I write. This means I change a lot of those details when I eventually start writing. Whilst it’s still great to plan out those details and make sure you keep up with them and review them, just spitting out as much writing as you can first can often help shape these details and really highlight which ones are important and need to be focused on.
There are so many sayings for it: Rome wasn’t built in a day; slow and steady wins the race; all good things come to those who wait etc. But they’re just sayings at the end of the day and often feel like a banner hung up in the mind that we forget about. Make it messy, write that rough draft; it’ll show you best how your writing has improved.
Take the unhelpful “just do it” and get messy. You can always clean it up later!
Hopfield is Writing 
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