168: MMM - On Writing the Best Worst First Draft of Your Presentation (Part One)
11 Apr 2018 · 21 min
In this solo episode of the "This Moved Me" podcast, host Sally Koering Zimney shares a step‑by‑step framework for creating a "shitty" first draft of a presentation that eventually yields a polished talk. She opens with personal anecdotes—from a tough college writing class to a redwood walk—to illustrate how writing (and speaking) is an exploratory journey. Drawing on a string of literary and cultural quotes (Anne Lamott, Stephen King, Maya Angelou, Robert Frost, Ray Bradbury, Anaïs Nin, Sylvia Plath), Sally establishes the emotional stakes of putting inner truths onto the page. She then outlines five concrete pillars for the best‑worst draft: 1) Begin – schedule time and simply start; 2) Don’t edit yourself – allow surprise and avoid self‑censorship; 3) Throw the kitchen sink in – capture every idea, no matter how raw; 4) Get dizzy – let ideas swirl, embrace the messy, iterative process; 5) Capture your speaking voice – use fast typing, voice memos, or tools like OmniOutliner to preserve the natural cadence of speech. Throughout, she emphasizes mindset (bravery, curiosity) and practical tactics (voice‑memo transcription, outliner software) while inviting listeners to share their own toolkits. The episode ends by positioning this first draft as the foundation for later coaching and refinement, promising a follow‑up on the next steps.
Chapters
Hey everybody, and welcome to This Moved Me, a podcast about creating talks that move the world. With me, your host, Sally Koering Zimney. Together with some fabulous guests, we will have a casual conversation about the art of public speaking, because a good talk can move the world, and it'll be fun. Yeah, I would think making alien cows meaningful. That's not a small task. I love your giggle. Wow. Oh my gosh, so we're waiting for everybody to figure out the alphabet. Good morning, movers! It's Sally, and I'm back with a mini move treat here this week. I hope you enjoyed Last week's mini moved me all about audience and the questions that we can ask ourselves so that we can really go for connection because, whoo, anything else, I don't know what we're doing if that is not our focus. But it really requires us to think really thoughtfully about our audience and what they need and where they're at. Anywho, that was last week. Today I'm I did some writing about this, which is kind of ironic given the topic. It's all about our best worst first draft. As Anne Lamott once famously said, and if there are kids around, earmuffs, earmuffs, but you all know this, right? You've heard this. She talks about the shitty first draft, right? That's what they are. That's what they are. And so how do we create the best shitty first draft? How do we How do we put enough and the right things in there so that we can find the masterpiece eventually? Because it's in there. So that's what I want to dig into today. And you can kind of hear in my nose, in my voice, I've got a cold and it's sort of a bummer, but I wanted to get this episode recorded before I take off for spring break. I'm heading to spring break tomorrow. I'm so jazzed. We're going, we're hopping on a train here from St. Paul and heading to Chicago. And you know, I know most people for spring break, if they are privileged enough to take a spring break, they head to someplace warm. Mm-mm, that's not what we do. Mm-mm, we go to Chicago. My brother's in Chicago. I'm so excited to see him. But there's also a little show called Hamilton in Chicago, and I am going, and I can't wait, you guys, I can't wait. That's why I'm doing this now, even with a cold, because I wanna make sure that there is an episode waiting for you when I get back, so there's no scrambling, 'cause a few weeks ago, I'm sure you guys know, I was talking about my overwhelm, and I'm overwhelmed, and many other people are overwhelmed, and my plan was to commit back, get back to the commitment of every week sharing an episode with you. And I've got bajillion ideas. It's really all about follow-through. So here I am making sure that it happens. Woo! Patting myself on the back. All right, so today, your best worst first draft of your presentation. How do we do that? So I want to start with a moment in time. So back in college, I was not just a theater major, I was also an English major. And I loved, loved, loved being on stage. I know, surprise there. But I also really loved to write. And little did I know then that I was creating for myself the building blocks of my life right now. But all I knew then was that I loved them both and I really didn't want to choose, even though the core of my time and my focus was in the theater world. Because I— there's a I like to read, but I didn't love the reading side of English. I just, I loved the writing. And for whatever reason, I like did not ever think about being a communications major. I was like, "No, I don't want to do that," which is funny. So anyway, I remember sitting in what was infamously known to be a really difficult writing class with a woman named Sister Mara, and Yeah, I went to a small liberal Catholic college, liberal arts Catholic college. It was also probably pretty liberal too. But anyway, Sister Mara was this really tough grader. She was really tough, uh, but she had, I don't know, just like wound her way into everybody's hearts, partly because she's this amazing nun, but she was this brilliant mentor and guide. And we did small group, really analysis of each other's writings, and I got got so much out of that class. But I remember sitting in the first class, and the assignment for us was to come up with a metaphor for our own process of writing. And you guys, I love metaphors. I love them. They are the best. They are meaty, and you can create so much meaning from them. And there's, there's such wonderful handholds for your audience, or in this case for your readers. And those— that's the best kind of meaning to create in my mind, because there's so many layers that you can use that people can associate, and it becomes emotive, right? So people can feel your ideas more. So I was really excited about this idea. I was like, yes, I cannot wait to figure out what my metaphor is. And I remember sitting there and thinking that Maybe my metaphor for writing was like a makeout session. So very senior year of college of me to think that, right? And what's funny is when we were all sharing our metaphors, I was not the only one who said that, which kind of made me feel like disappointed in myself that I hadn't thought of something more original. But What I was trying to communicate, and what I think many people were trying to communicate in our senior year of college way, is that writing is exploratory. I know what I think and feel and want to say better after I write. I don't really know what I want to write before that. I don't really know what I want to say. So now as a grown-up, I might think of the metaphor a little bit more like this walk I once took through the redwoods in Northern California several years ago. It was this beautiful sort of mystical place. It was very searching, you know? I didn't know where I would end up, but I really enjoyed the experience of finding out, right? Which is kind of funny if you apply those same ideas to my makeout session metaphor. Anyway, okay. So some of those same elements apply to us when we are creating our talks. We want to go on the journey. We might have an idea of where we're going, but we're not sure how we're going to get there. And so we face down the possibility of a draft of something, right? We've got it. We know we've got to tackle this draft. So to frame up these pillars that I want to offer you in terms of how you can create your best worst draft of your presentation, of your talk, I want to share with you this quote by Stephen King. He said, "The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish them. Words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried." like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly, only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think, when the secret stays locked within, not for want of a teller, but for want of an understanding ear. Aw, Stephen King! I love that. And I feel like it's speaking to the kind of aching and longing that we have as speakers before we sit down to that first draft. How do we put what is deep within us, how do we bring that out, and the fears that sometimes keep us from laying ourselves on the line like you need to do if you want to move your audience and transform what is possible in a big way. So what I want to do is offer you some pillars that may help you get in the right mindset and approach this first draft so it can be the best worst, the best shittiest first draft. Okay, so the first, of course, is to begin. Wow, Sally, thank you, that is so deep, but it's true. That is the biggest thing you can focus on. So set a time, put it in your calendar, and just begin. I'm of course thinking of Elizabeth Gilbert, and her TED Talk, which I talk about a lot, and Big Magic. And we cannot control the genius, whether or not she shows up. If she's sitting in the corner of your room, your only job is to show up and begin. Maya Angelou said, "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." So let's not do that anymore. Let's not bear the agony and just sit down. And sometimes it's easier to sit down if we can accept pillar number 2, which is to not edit ourself, or how I like to think of it, let yourself be surprised at what comes out. Because, uh, if we lower our expectations a little bit Okay, and our only job is to begin and start and see what happens, kind of with that mindset of like, well, let's just see what comes out. Let yourself be surprised. Then some beautiful things might happen in that. Robert Frost— I'm full of quotes today, you guys, because there's so many good ones around this idea. Robert Frost said, "No tears in the writer." No tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer. No surprise in the reader. And so we have to open ourselves up to what we don't know will happen, the possibility of what might surprise you. And so, uh, the trick is not letting your brain stop you. Okay, Jason Jaegerd, who is this amazing speaker, he's been on the show and I've seen him speak several times at Story, talks about the somatic markers, the boundaries that exist in our brain and they keep us from doing powerful work, right? That there are things that are within our reach but we won't even consider them because of the boundaries that we have created for ourselves. Like, we are our own worst enemies in this process. And so if you can begin and let yourself be surprised without any boundaries, do not stop yourself, do not edit yourself in the process, you might find something that you want to say that you didn't know that you wanted to say. And so that is pillar number 2, let yourself be surprised. Okay, and number 3 is, it's the whole kitchen sink, right? Everything goes in there, right? So, so this is just a little deeper step beyond pillar 2, let yourself be surprised, and nothing is left out. Okay, see what happens in the exploration. Everything is in. So Anais Nin said, "We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect." So really see this as an exploration, and you might have a vision in your head. Some people show up to their drafts with a clear vision of what they want to do, and that will limit you, right? Because you, you're coming into it with those somatic markers. So put the kitchen sink in. Everything is in. So the trick is not editing yourself. And the third pillar, the third pillar is to get dizzy. And what do I mean by that? I mean, I want you to let it wind around and around. Don't think about format, don't think about flow, okay? You're exploring, and that's good. I want you to try on all the ideas. Ray Bradbury, in the book Zen in the Art of Writing, said, "You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you." So my hope is that once you begin, right, you're gonna start feeling a flow. If you don't feel the flow, right, you're gonna begin again another time, okay? But when you start feeling the flow, right, you're gonna get dizzy, with it, right? You're gonna have a million ideas coming at you, and you want to capture them the best that you can. And don't edit yourself, don't think about the perfect word choice. You're just gonna get dizzy with it and, and throw it all in there. So let it wind around and be a dizzying experience, because what you're doing is you are in the repetition, right, in the deeper exploration, is that every time you come around on it again, you're digging a little bit deeper. So let yourself get dizzy and drunk with it, in another— in Ray Bradbury's terms, okay? So that is the fourth pillar, because the truth is you've got to have lots of bad ideas before you land on the good one. And so the shitty first draft is all about the capturing the bad ideas, because it's not that the bad ideas should be thrown out, it's that you have to peel them away a little bit. Well, sometimes you want to throw them out, sometimes they are just bad, but it's more likely that you have to get through the bad ideas before you can find the good one. Okay, so again, this, this draft is not about at the end of it feeling like, yeah, I see it. At the end of it, you should feel spent, right? At the end of this draft, you should be like, "Whew, I got way too much here. Like, there's nothing else that I want to say about this," right? That is a shitty first draft. And the fifth pillar is about finding a program that allows you to do all this, to capture your true speaking voice, your words. I happen to be a really fast typer. Which comes so in handy because sometimes I will type as my speakers speak to me to capture their words in a way that feels more in tune and true to their speaking voice. I've talked about this a lot, but if you are someone who does not type or write like you speak, then you have to find another way. A lot of people I know will use voice memo and get it transcribed. That is a brilliant way to fast-track this process, okay? And it's an awesome way to get the whole kitchen sink in there because we're talking, we're much less likely to edit ourselves, right? The process of typing and sitting in front of a computer, you can't help but edit, right? Because you're seeing it in front of your face and you have a sense of how long it is and you see the words and they associate different things with you, so it's really difficult. I happen to get a lot out of the process of typing because for whatever reason I've got a direct line from my head to my mouth to the, the keyboard or whatever, but most people don't. So find a way that works for you. A lot of if you don't use voice memo or you're not somebody who can type fast and really capture your true speaking voice, my husband uses OmniOutliner because it— once you get to the editing stage, it's really helpful and usable because it's easy to move things around. And that's kind of a cool program, so you might want to think about that too. Okay, and I'd be really curious to hear from you. What are the programs that you use to to help you go from what's in your head to what comes out of your mouth in a way that really stays true to that voice. Okay, so you're gonna begin, you're gonna let yourself be surprised, you're gonna put the whole kitchen sink in there, you're gonna let it be dizzy, let it wind around and around, you're gonna— and then you're gonna find a program that allows you to capture your true speaking voice. A process on the outliner, voice memo, brainstorming docs, who knows, Word, whatever it takes. You're gonna find a way to find your true, capture your true voice. Sylvia Plath said, and by the way, everything in life is writable about, or speakable about, if you have the outgoing guts to do it. And the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt, and we have to put on a brave, bold face. Okay, so this is step 1 of the process of a shitty first draft. Okay, step 1. And next time I'm gonna talk about the next thing that you're gonna do, step 2. The shitty first draft, and then finally we'll get to step 3. Okay, so be brave in your exploration. If you share this draft with a coach, know that a good coach will see this as something within which the masterpiece lives, right? And it is her job to chisel away at what you have to help you see it for yourself and reveal it to the world. So you got this! I am cheering you on, movers! Off you go! All right. It's the whole kitten— kit— kit. Why can't I say that?
