Once, while training at a manufacturing site of a Fortune 100 company, I had trouble persuading my trainees to stop revising and editing while they were drafting. They insisted, "Here, we work hard to get it right the first time."
I realized that these managers saw me as just a crazy consultant who was clueless about their strong quality-oriented corporate culture. But for once, I knew what to do. The plant where I was working made printers, so I asked the managers to tell me the story of how their company developed and manufactured a new printer model.
They proceeded to describe an elaborate planning process, culminating in the building of a prototype. At this point in their story, I interrupted. "And you make sure to put the company's nameplate on that first printer?" I asked. "And you make sure to have the color of the finish just right? Because you're eventually going to sell it, right?"
The managers laughed. "Of course not," they said. "That printer is a prototype. It's not built to sell; it's built just to test."
"Ah ha!" I gloated. "So you don't do it right the first time. Because you know you won't sell the prototype, it doesn't have to be perfect. Making it perfect--with the right nameplate and paint and all--would be a huge waste of time and would distract you from the more important features that have to be tested."
Please understand; such flashes of insight are rare for me. But that day my trainees had given me a powerful new metaphor. A draft is a prototype. It's not the final product. It's not written for the reader. It's written for the writer. It's "quick and dirty." It's written to test. It's written to see if it does what it was designed to do.
This week, when you write, make sure you build a prototype. By doing so, and by then testing it, you'll be sure of having a better final product.
One of the wonderful things about writing on a computer is that a draft does not consume any of the precious physical space in my physical filing cabinet. I can write a draft, read it, and PUT IT AWAY in a file on my computer (I got 200GBytes or something, enough "space" to hold a gazillion drafts).
Note, I "put it away" and not "throw it away." I can always go back to the draft if I choose. Putting it away is a key point of safety with some of us. We've created a "put-away prototype" and not a "throw-away prototype." Ah, safety, security, knowing that I have not "wasted" that effort it took to write the draft.
Posted by: Dwayne Phillips | 02 June 2009 at 09:07 AM
Dwayne I agree, this would be so much harder, time consuming etc if we didn't have the use of computers!
Drafting work is always a good idea, I am always writing then re-writing but rarely actually write something to reference later on in the process.
In future I will have to make use of the options that my computer hands to me!
Posted by: Danielle Ingram | 04 June 2009 at 03:50 AM
Ken,
This is a brilliant metaphor of the draft stage of writing. People who don't understand "first drafts" will get the idea of a prototype.
Posted by: Roy Jacobsen | 04 June 2009 at 05:50 PM
RE: It's "quick and dirty."
Done properly, a first draft (of most works) is neither quick, nor dirty.
It's sturdy, well constructed, and a lot of planning went into it.
Posted by: Thorne | 06 July 2009 at 04:26 PM