Living with Junk

In my business with The Guy, we do product photography. People give us merchandise they want shot for their catalogue, website, or whatever, and we shoot it. It's all well and good, but you would be amazed how many customers just never pick up their stuff after the shoot.

Over the years we've scored good stuff occasionally - a load of nice smelly candles once, and a couple of really nice kitchen pots - but most of it is useless junk. I have found, in my house, my basement, or my garage, the following items:

• a box of metal gauges (I think) with weird silver octopus wires
• some sort of horse blanket - hideous and stinky
• a box of hospital scrubs, size XS
• samples of wedding favours, tied with ribbon
• 20 doormats
• a plastic belt you can put your beer cans in
• a football that glows in the dark

And so on. I really should give the guy who picks up my recycling a Christmas gift.

I'm 50 pages from finishing my work in progress. It's only the first draft, and that means I have to live with the following junk in my novel:

• historical anachronisms I don't know the answer to
• scenes that are mostly dialogue with no description
• one honking unresolved subplot that is driving me crazy
• a couple of plotting shortcuts I told myself I'd fix later
• obscure action and probably some sloppy dialogue tags
• scenes that are just sort of there

Last year, Nora Roberts wrote an article for RWA in which she said frankly that she calls her first drafts POS, for Pieces of Shit. I think I've seen that article either quoted or referred to at least thirty times since she wrote it - it's like every writer who read that article, including me, really took that tidbit to heart. It's just so comforting to know that Nora's first drafts are as crappy as mine or yours.

We beat ourselves up over crappy first drafts. We tell ourselves they're awful, they stink, that we need to make everything right the first time. The strange thing about the Nora article was the underlying assumption we all had, conscious or not, that her books just come out perfect.

But everyone's first draft is full of junk. The trick is to step over the junk, pile it in a corner, ignore it, and keep writing. The junk in my house is a sign that we're productive, that real people live and work here. The mess is what we create.

The junk in my book is a sign that I'm living there, writing there, learning there. It's the sign that I've taken the dive into my book and splashed around, made a mess. I've tried things this way and that to see what works. I've strung words together a hundred different ways to express myself. Sure, I'll clean it up properly, but my book will never be sterile, and neither will my house. Life is just too short to beat yourself up over a glowing football.

Now I'm going out to my garage, to get dirty.