cake."
But because by then I had been writing for so long, I would eventually let myself trust the processâsort of, more or less. Iâd write a first draft that was maybe twice as long as it should be, with a self-indulgent and boring beginning, stupefying descriptions of the meal, lots of quotes from my black-humored friends that made them sound more like the Manson girls than food lovers, and no ending to speak of. The whole thing would be so long and incoherent and hideous that for the rest of the day Iâd obsess about getting creamed by a car before I could write a decent second draft. Iâd worry that people would read what Iâd written and believe that the accident had really been a suicide, that I had panicked because my talent was waning and my mind was shot.
The next day, though, Iâd sit down, go through it all with a colored pen, take out everything I possibly could, find a new lead somewhere on the second page, figure out a kicky place to end it, and then write a second draft. It always turned out fine, sometimes even funny and weird and helpful. Iâd go over it one more time and mail it in.
Then, a month later, when it was time for another review, the whole process would start again, complete with the fears that people would find my first draft before I could rewrite it.
Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting somethingâ anythingâdown on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draftâyou just get it down. The second draft is the up draftâyou fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if itâs loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.
What Iâve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head. First thereâs the vinegar-lipped Reader Lady, who says primly, "Well, thatâs not very interesting, is it?" And thereâs the emaciated German male who writes these Orwellian memos detailing your thought crimes. And there are your parents, agonizing over your lack of loyalty and discretion; and thereâs William Bur-roughs, dozing off or shooting up because he finds you as bold and articulate as a houseplant; and so on. And there are also the dogs: letâs not forget the dogs, the dogs in their pen who will surely hurtle and snarl their way out if you ever stop writing, because writing is, for some of us, the latch that keeps the door of the pen closed, keeps those crazy ravenous dogs contained.
Quieting these voices is at least half the battle I fight daily. But this is better than it used to be. It used to be 87 percent. Left to its own devices, my mind spends much of its time having conversations with people who arenât there. I walk along defending myself to people, or exchanging repartee with them, or rationalizing my behavior, or seducing them with gossip, or pretending Iâm on their TV talk show or whatever. I speed or run an aging yellow light or donât come to a full stop, and one nanosecond later am explaining to imaginary cops exactly why I had to do what I did, or insisting that I did not in fact do it.
I happened to mention this to a hypnotist I saw many years ago, and he looked at me very nicely. At first I thought he was feeling around on the floor for the silent alarm button, but then he gave me the following exercise, which I still use to this day.
Close your eyes and get quiet for a minute, until the chatter starts up. Then isolate one of the voices and imagine the person speaking as a mouse. Pick it up by the tail and drop it into a mason jar. Then isolate another voice, pick it up by the tail, drop it in the jar. And so on. Drop in any high-maintenance parental units, drop in any contractors, lawyers, colleagues, children, anyone who is whining in your head. Then put