INBOUND Bold Talks: Beth Dunn "Fix Your Writing"

Fix your writing, huh? Yeah. That's cute. That must mean that it's that time in the conference. Yeah, just about that time when some fancy pants editor gets up in front of a room full of people she has never met before, never read your writing, and tells them that there's something wrong with your writing. Your writing is broken. Your writing is bad, and it needs to be fixed. Why? Why? Could we go back to the front, please? Thank you. Your writing needs to be fixed. Well, that sounds like the opposite of a good time to me. So. So let's talk about something else. Let's talk about what you were doing this time last year. How many of you were at Inbound last year? Yeah. Come on. Come on. Thank you. And how many? Just out of curiosity, how many of you are at Inbound this year? Awesome. So last year, what happened was a bunch of us got together and we agreed on three basic principles. One, that writing is super important in today's world. Two, that we all wanted to become better writers. And three, that there was a fairly simple practice that we could adopt to become those better writers. And that involved establishing a practice of sitting down and writing just a little bit every day, even if it's crap. It was a lot of fun. We shared a lot of laughs. It was a very special episode of Inbound 13. And the best part of it was how many of you really went for it. I mean, lots and lots of you emailed me afterwards and told me that you were starting a practice of writing a little bit every day, which is great, because obviously it's very personally gratifying, but also because that means that lots and lots of you started caring less and less about whether or not those first drafts were, in fact, any good. And this is a good thing, because that's where the magic happens. The magic only begins when you write a crappy first draft. That's the raw material out of which all other writing comes. It all starts there. So that was great. And then the inevitable happened. One or two of you, I mean, not a lot, and I'm sure it wasn't, you started taking those crappy first drafts and sending them off into the world as is, without any further ado. Yeah. And just as a reminder, I mean, just a little refresher for all of us here, what happens when we do that? What happens when we send our crappy first drafts out into the world as is, without any further ado? Yeah. Bad things. Bad things happen. Because as it turns out, even though a practice of writing just a little bit every day, Even if it's crap, can and will, if we let it make us into better writers, doesn't mean that all of those crappy first drafts, or honestly, even any of them, should ever see the light of day. Not as is, not without any further ado, because these drafts, these things that you're publishing, are representing your business, right? They're representing your brand. At the very least, they're representing yourself, right? They've got your name on it, and you deserve better. So now things have escalated, right? Last year, we were just a plucky band of outsiders hoping to become better writers. Now it sounds suspiciously like somebody thinks we need to become editors. Well, I'm here to tell you that that is not what I am here to tell you. Because, as a matter of fact, this kind of thinking is a trap. Let me explain. When we think about an editor, what most of us are thinking about is that friend that we all have. That friend, you know, the one who's always posting the passive aggressive little grammar police nonsense on Facebook. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that some of you are that friend. Yeah, she's the friend who knows all the rules. She's the one who can straighten out your grammar, tuck in your punctuation, and make sure you're not doing anything scandalous with your apostrophes. People, I have seen what you are doing with your apostrophes. Stop it. And the mistake that most of us make, even though the work that this editor does is vitally important to the cause, and it is the mistake that most of us make, is that we invite this editor into our world too soon. We invite her into the cherished, private, even tender world of our lousy first draft. And we hand her our babies when they are still newborn. And she does what she is professionally trained and in fact, naturally inclined to do. And she tells us what is wrong with them. She tells us where our writing is broken, where our writing is bad, and in excruciating detail how we need to fix it. And since we as writers are very strong, solid, tender little flowers, we take this criticism extremely well. It doesn't go well. Because actually, there is nothing more deadly to the practice of writing a little bit every day than inviting the editor into that world too soon. The fact of the matter is there is a missing middle step between the crappy first draft missing middle step right here and the editor. And it's that missing middle step that I want to talk to you about today. Let me ask you a question. What's the Greatest invention of the last 2000 years. Nice. Not the printing press. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it's the screw. Anyone? Archimedes? Good old Archie from Syracuse invented this giant screw 2000 years ago. It was originally invented to transport large amounts of water from the lowlands up to higher elevations. Really great breakthrough. Turned out, of course, to be useful in all sorts of other inventions and applications, including, yes, eventually, the printing press. So if you said that you're very clever now, hush. Think of the screw as the greatest staple gun ever invented. You want your writing to stick in the minds of your readers, you need to find the screw in your writing. Right. That came out wrong. What I'm really talking about here, obviously, is really just learning how to revise our writing. But revise is such a friendly, misleading, innocuous kind of word that I really don't think that it gets to the heart of what it is we're talking about here. Ask any writer how they feel about the process of revision and they'll describe something to you on par with rubbing broken glass into your eyeballs for days. Quite honestly, feels a whole lot more like getting screwed. But it is vital to the practice of writing, because without it, you will either simply send your lousy first drafts right out into the world without any further ado. We already know what happens then. You're screwed. Or you will simply leapfrog over that missing middle step, go right to the editor, hand her your crappy first draft, and she will do her job and hand you back a perfectly polished turd. Once again, you are screwed. No, we need to learn how to revise our own writing. We need to go back and find the screw, the fastener, the thing with leverage. We need to go back to our lousy first draft before we call in the editor, dig through it until we find the good idea that's buried inside every lousy first draft. I call it the screw. Why? Because it's the thing with the point. It's the thing with a point that you can fix in the minds of your readers. Staple gun it to the front of their minds, screw it firmly in place, glue it up like a giant recruiting poster that people will remember and talk about for years. That's what I mean when I say fix your writing. Not that it's broken, not that it's bad, but that it needs to be affixed in the minds of your readers through the hard work of revision. And that all begins when we go back to our draft and find the point. So where do you find this point? Well, I'm glad you asked because it gives me an opportunity to give you another list of three. I'm a writer. I love things in threes. I usually find the point in my lousy first drafts and in the ones that are given to me for revision and editing in one of three different places. The first place is in the place that I call the change. When we're writing our lousy first drafts, we often begin in one place and think we're going to end up in another. But usually at some point along life's way, we veer off course, we jump the rails. And that's good. That's all part of the creative process. When you go back in the revision stage to your lousy first draft, look at that fork in the road. What was the change? What was the choice that you made? Is it the same choice that your readers would make? Should they? Quite often you will find the crux of your matter right there. Good points are very often buried in the change in your lousy first draft. The second place, I often find the point, the screw, the fastener in my lousy first drafts is in the laugh. And I don't mean the part where you think you're some kind of a comedy genius, although you may be. I mean the part where you're writing along and everything is rational and reasonable and insane, and then all of a sudden, your subconscious comes lurching out onto the page and it makes you laugh out loud. You're like, oh, my God. Where the hell did that come from? And if this hasn't happened to you yet, that just means that you haven't started writing every day. Trust me, it will happen with alarming frequency. Once you do, go back to your lousy first draft and find the place that made you laugh out loud with how fricking weird it was. Lots of very good points are buried right there. And of course, the last place and the place where the majority, the vast majority of points, good ideas and fasteners are found in crappy first drafts is at the end. It's always at the end. Why is it at the end? It's on the last page. It's in the last paragraph. It's in the very last sentence. Why do all the good ideas hide out there? Anybody else notice this? Yeah. I have two theories about this. Why they end up there. One, good ideas are shy. This is why we have to write the crappy first draft. Good ideas are shy, and they want to see a lot of other ideas, maybe less attractive ideas. Fill up the room first before they will make an appearance. So that's what we need to do in that creative writing process. Fill up the room so the good ideas feel confident enough to show up. The second reason why they end up at the end of our draft is that we as writers leave them there. We see them show up there. We see that's a good idea, and we say, our work is done. We say, we're all finished here. Our work has just begun. That is the whole point of writing the crappy first draft is to give birth to that one great idea. Now we need to take it out, give it some center stage, screw it in place, and make it the fixed point on which everything else turns. And this is how every good, talented, and productive writer you and I know secretly works. They start with a crappy first draft, they move on, and they revise the crap out of it. And then they call in the editor. The editor does important work. Maybe we'll talk about the editor next year. Finally, once all of those three steps have been taken in order. The steps are in order for a reason, people. You can hit publish because you are no longer screwed. Thank you.