Sometimes there’s more than one way to do something. In fact, usually, there’s more than one way to do something. There may be more than one good way to do something. There can only be one best way to do something, but that’s down to how the word best works and nothing to do with how many ways there might be to do a given thing. There were many ways today’s Shelf Life could have begun. This was probably not the best way, but it’s the way you get.
I’m not a fan of telling children “you get what you get and you don’t get upset,” which is my generation’s version of the Baby Boomers’ “life’s not fair.” I think it’s good that children are interested in justice and fairness. There’s no need to stamp that out.
I once read about a family’s solution to their two kids’ constant bickering over who got the bigger serving of [whatever was on offer that day] and created a rule that one child would create the servings (cut the cake, spoon up the spaghetti, scoop the ice cream, whatever), and then the other child would get to choose the serving they wanted. This lead to whichever kid was in charge of serving that day to be scrupulously fair. That is an example of the best possible way to do something.
I often believe I know the best way to do something. If I didn’t think I already knew the best way to do it, I would not be doing it; I would instead be finding the best way to do it. To me best usually means most efficient but efficient does not mean the same thing as fast. My personal definition of “the most efficient way” is “the fastest way to do something completely and so well it won’t have to be done again.” For instance, writing the shortest email that answers someone’s question is not necessarily the most efficient response. The shortest email that answers someone’s question so completely that it heads off any follow up question is the most efficient response. If I have to write a second email to answer follow up questions with information I had at the time of writing the first email, I was not as efficient as I could have been.
I am a big believer in efficiency. There’s a popular adage that if you want to find the fastest or most efficient way to do something, you should ask a lazy person to do it because they’ll find the speediest way to get it done so they can get back to being lazy. I almost believe this, except that laziness does not exist. Instead, I think you should ask the person who has the least amount of patience for things taking longer than they should or for doing things twice. I am that person—the person with the least amount of patience. I don’t strive for efficiency so I can get more things done (the basis of capitalism, which I abhor) but because things taking longer than they should makes my hair stand on end.
Here are the important takeaways from the navel-gazing above:
There are many ways to do anything, some ways better than others, but only one best way.
The fastest or shortest way of doing something is not necessarily the most efficient.
These takeaways are to prepare you for what I have to say next, which is: Sometimes there’s an easy way to do something and a hard way to do something, and unfortunately the hard way is the more efficient—and therefore better, or even best—way of doing the thing.
Like, it’s easier on its face to jumpstart a dying or dead car battery than it is to get a new battery an install it. You got to go to the place where they sell car batteries, and figure out which one your car needs, and buy it (expensive), and install it. Actually most of that the guy at the car place will do even if don’t wear a low-cut shirt. Apparently, it’s part of their job. If you wear a low-cut shirt that’s just your outfit and has not influence over whether you install the car battery or they do. I wear a low-cut shirt whether I need help with my car or not, as a public service.
As I was saying, about the jumpstart, it’s easier to jump the battery than it is to go to Autozone and all that stuff I just said in the last paragraph. However, if you have to jump the battery once a week to get the car going when you could have gotten a new battery only once, then the jumpstart is the easier but less efficient (and objectively worse) solution.
There’s also a bit of gambling involved because sometimes you only need to jump it one time and then it’s good as new. How many chances (jumps) do you give the battery before you cut your losses and get the new battery?
When you are writing sometimes you will have to make a terrible choice:
Slow down or stop your writing flow to get a a word, phrase, sentence, or section exactly right; or
Write that portion of text in what you know is a suboptimal way so you can keep moving forward, and plan to improve it in revision.
I’m always saying the first draft should be a garbage draft (and I do believe that)—just dump all the words out of your brain onto the page and worry about making it good later. However, not everybody works like that. Every writer writes a first draft but not all first drafts are created equal. Some writers move as quickly as possible to get that text down and move on; and some move more slowly, putting more deliberation and care into their word choices.
But: Which of those methods is more efficient?
This is a real question I’m asking because I can’t say for sure. I suspect each individual writer might have to ask this of themself.
First, consider that even a clean draft requires revision and editing to shine. I don’t write a particularly clean or good draft, but I acknowledge and accept that others say they do. When someone says, though, that they write such a good first draft that there’s no significant revision required and their first draft is pretty much publication-ready, then I admit I feel dubious about the quality of the work they’re putting out.
So, even if you slow down and take particular care with the language, flow, and style of your first draft, there will still be a revision process to undertake before you truly have a publication-quality manuscript on your hands. But that revision process may be quicker, easier, less painful, and require fewer passes if a writer devoted more time to putting out a cleaner first draft rather than opening a document and dumping in the contents of their brain. This is my method, the brain dumping. No matter how carefully you dump your brain into the document, some words still slosh onto the counter and make a mess. This is a hazard of the job.
As an editor, I often advise people—everyone, writers and other editors and editorial-adjacent people—not to focus on smaller items (in a manuscript) until larger items are taken care of. Don’t try to wordsmith your work before you’ve revised for plot, character, pacing, theme, and other big-ticket showstoppers. The reason: In the course of writing and revising any longform work, there will probably be things that must be added and (brace yourself) things that must be removed after the first draft has been completed. Most early drafts I’ve seen of anything longer than 10,000 words have excess that can (and should) be trimmed. Fine-tuning done to material that is ultimately removed, naturally, is wasted effort; but so is fine-tuning done to text that is interrupted by rearrangement or by necessary additions during revision.
But this is not to say there’s no value in exercising your writerly wordcraft in early drafts. For one thing, if thinking of your first draft as the “vomit pass” or “garbage draft” is demotivating, you don’t have to think of it that way. There’s no reason not to put effort into making it as lyrical and beautiful as possible, even if you plan to revise, if that method of drafting is enjoyable and motivating for you.
I often find doing one-and-a-half times the bare minimum on the first attempt at something can head off having to do two times the minimum when whatever it is comes back for me to deal with a second time.
There can only be one best way to write a first draft, because that’s the way superlatives work. But that doesn’t mean the best way for you to write your first draft has to be the same as any other writer’s best way to write their first draft. The best way to write a first draft is always whatever way gets it done.
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