The concept of a “shitty first draft” is of course brilliant and lifesaving if you understand it to mean that the draft is allowed to be shitty, ie, allowed to fall short of any standard you may be carrying around in your mind beyond “this should make basic sense”. But it tripped me up when I started unconsciously interpreting “shitty” as a matter of not trying very hard, or not caring very much, or like it didn’t matter what I produced.

In fact I think it does matter, and that you should care a lot… BUT that the thing you should be caring about isn’t giving a praiseworthy performance in words, but rather, saying the thing you want to say, as forthrightly and honestly as you can, with no concession to any imagined reader except that the language basically makes sense. For anyone with perfectionistic or approval-seeking tendencies, this can feel like walking into a stiff breeze – definitely quite effortful, in one sense of the word, but not an anguished self-critical grind.

For me the idea of “just write it as if you’re giving a talk” is very powerful here (though so many people are terrified of public speaking that this probably won’t help them). But anyway the point is just to say the thing you want to say – then in the next draft start thinking more about who might read it.

The result of this first draft might be shitty in the eyes of your inner judge, but in fact the input of your inner judge is precisely what’s not relevant here, so actually I’m a bit reluctant to concede anything to him by calling it shitty…