First Drafts

a Joy Williams & Miranda July venn diagram

My copy of Joy William’s The Quick & the Dead feels like a security blanket right now, which is something I haven’t imposed upon a novel since I read Lonesome Dove in early December. Here is what the internet taught me about Joy Williams: she is 81 and an Aquarius; she hates computers, exclusively uses a typewriter, and does not have an email address; she loves road trips; she wears dark sunglasses at all hours of the day and night; and she does not condone first drafts.

I call these letters ‘First Drafts’ to prompt myself to write. Putting a draft here is an attainable feat, something to do on a Sunday morning. Drafts are allowed to be messy and nonsensical, which is encouraging. Once it’s there, the simple act of editing turns a first draft into a second, and so on.

In an interview with the New York Times, Joy Williams says:

“It’s drafts I don’t believe in. I’m averse to entertaining the thought that what I’m working on is a first draft, which implies the necessity of a second, even a third.”

An aversion to drafting requires Williams to be more precise with words. So does a typewriter. She writes slowly, putting great pressure on her sentences, and you can tell. Her specificity is brilliant, and it reveals shocking characters.

In writing this letter, I challenged myself to think through the entirety of every sentence before typing it. I was not very successful. Can I blame computers? They are faster, but I wonder if the benefit of speed ever becomes eclipsed by the allowance for sloppiness?

I got curious about how other writers approach drafting, or don’t. Joy Williams does seem to be somewhat of an outlier, as many other writers uphold pious commitments to a first draft. Nonetheless, she posed to me a question.

I like to listen to the New Yorker’s Fiction Podcast while I do things in the kitchen. All through Miranda July’s “Roy Spivey” and “The Metal Bowl”, and the discussions that followed both, I couldn’t stop thinking about Joy Williams. The two women, and their eccentricities, scratch eerily similar itches for me, and reading them in unison makes me want to write.

Miranda July on Drafting:

“I was a lot dumber when I was writing the novel. I felt like worse of a writer because I wrote many of the short stories in one sitting or over maybe three days, and they didn’t change that much. There weren’t many, many drafts. That made me feel semi-brilliant and part of a magical process. Writing the novel wasn’t like that. I would come home every day from my office and say, ‘Well, I still really like the story, I just wish it was better written.’ At that point, I didn’t realize I was writing a first draft. And the first draft was the hardest part. From there, it was comparatively easy. It was like I had some Play-Doh to work with and could just keep working with it—doing a million drafts and things changing radically and characters appearing and disappearing and solving mysteries: Why is this thing here? Should I just take that away?…no, that is there, in fact, because that is the key to this.” -Interview Magazine

I’m pretending Joy Williams and Miranda July are coming over for dinner. I turn on all the lights so Joy can see. I bury my copy of The First Bad Man, I don’t want to seem presumptuous. I put on lilting piano music and pull my hair back with a clip. I’m making enchiladas, which is exhilarating because they’ll never know it’s the only dish I know how to cook well. I think about what I will say to them. Mostly I want to observe them, to hear them speak to each other, but I’ll try to be brave and start things off. Maybe I’ll share some personal information, something they would both appreciate, like my menstrual cycle being two days shy from synchronization with the Full Moon.

I often lament technology and modern conveniences for robbing us of richer human connection, but in my writing, the prospect of merging rudimentary drafting techniques (like Joy’s) with modern ones (Play-Doh, computers) brings me closer to contentment.

How do you approach drafting?

xo