I know, it’s just a first draft. Just get it out! Just go crazy! Just brain dump! Who cares how many times you just wrote “just?” Or that you used too many exclamation points? Don’t worry about commas or split infinitives or run-on sentences or bad grammar. In some cases, you may not even be able to read what you wrote, but later you’ll know what you meant. It’s okay for now, because it’s just a first draft.
Description is important, but not right now. It will just slow you down. Do people even want to know what pain smells like, what color the weather is, or if perfume has a taste? You could spend 30 minutes thinking of the right way to describe the mildew in your antagonist’s shower. Close the thesaurus.com browser. You’re wasting valuable writing time. You can add your descriptions later. This is just a first draft, right?
Don’t think about whether your scenes are out of order. That can be fixed during your next draft, which you won’t get to until after 300 pages of word-vomit are typed or handwritten, and chunks of it will have to be rewritten anyway, because it won’t make logical sense. But it’ll make sense to you later, because the scenes are in the right order in your head. For now, it’s just a first draft.
Eyes and hearts. You’ll want to avoid them in your next draft. But in this one, you can write about eyes and hearts all you want. Everyone can stare into each other’s eyes, even if you don’t know what color the characters’ eyes are yet. So yes, by all means, let your heroine’s heart burst with happy-ever-after love, and all of the cliche things that come to mind. You can fix that later. It’s just a first draft, right?
It’s okay if you don’t have concise, snappy dialogue. You’ll develop the character’s voices as you go. Let them ramble away for now. It’s better to understand the dynamic. You can cut what doesn’t work later.
Speaking of “cut,” don’t cut anything as you write. Pretend your keyboard doesn’t have the delete or backspace buttons. Your pencil doesn’t have an eraser. Your pen can’t draw a heavy dark line through the written gobbledygook. And don’t analyze how all of the extra words will effect your word count.
Oh yeah, word count. That can be a stickler. But don’t let it be. Just write what you want to write. Tell your story. Don’t worry how long or short your book is going to be. It doesn’t matter if you over-write or under-write. Unless your protagonist is actually an underwriter. And if they are, you can change them to a law-firm partner later.
This is just the first draft. The only one who is going to see—and is only ever meant to see—this crappy, ill-written, mental-mush first draft is you, right?
Right!
Good. I’m glad that’s settled. Now, about that second draft…
Rene Penn 
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