This is the “NaNo and Similar” discussion area, so I’m taking my life in my hands to ask a question that I’ve had about writing sprints: If novel writing is a marathon, why all the energy and excitement around writing sprints? I’m a slow, methodical outliner, and I genuinely don’t understand how this can be such a popular thing. 'splain it to me! (Please be gentle.)
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I also don’t understand sprints.
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For some writers, getting a first draft down is hard because the writer is trying to find the perfect wording. They’re so fixated on “it must be perfect or I cannot move forward” that they get nothing actually written.
The idea of a timed sprint is to get out of your own way and break that “it must be perfect” habit so that you actually have words on the page.
With the timer running, all a person can do is write their story without second guessing any word choices or where the story is headed. It will often result in contradictory ideas or a completely unexpected turn of events.
Once these rough ideas are on the page, the person can go back and decide if any are workable and how to use them.
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Actually, RuthS has already said it all. Editing is easier than creating. If you don’t have a first draft, you won’t be able to write a final draft. It doesn’t matter if the final version is completely different from the first draft. Without a beginning, there is no end.
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As am I. I spent a couple years (2021-2022) researching & outlining a horror novel, which I never made the time to actually write. 
When this post alerted me that PWA was hosting a NaNo event this year –
And I remembered that this distraction-free device built specifically for getting down first drafts will (hopefully) be delivered to me in October –
And I realized that I’ve got no major commitments this November –
I thought, well, I’ve never done a NaNo before, but why not try it this year and get started on that novel. 
I write long first drafts, so 50k would probably only be 30% - 50% of a complete first draft. But it would be more than I have now. 
Best,
Jim
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Yeah, it’s an event and associated process to help people who lack the motivation to write to actually write by persuading them that quality is overrated and size is everything.
{looks at the empty space on the bookshelf reserved for all his own finished novels}
Hmmm, maybe I should give it a try after all.
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For me, creating is easier than editing. I’d rather have major surgery than edit my work. (Although, I love beta reading for others…)
I’m also a perfectionist that fusses with each word in a first draft for too long. Which is frustrating because I’m a pantser. My idea of where any project is going is the writing equivalent of being lost in an unfamiliar forest with a dead flashlight.
Sprints give me just enough pressure to write but no time to procrastinate or second guess myself. It gets me out of all those lovely daydreams about what my project could be and makes me actually commit to something.
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I forget the source, but one of my favorite bits of writing advice is:
There is no draft so terrible that it can’t be improved, but a blank page is just a blank page.
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This is great advice.
It sounds like good advice, but I’m not sure it is.
I mean, it’s true (even if the easiest way to improve it ends up being to delete every word and start again)… but I’m not sure the idea of producing the so-called “vomit draft” is good advice for everyone. If you’re already a competent and instinctive writer then yeah maybe your unfiltered musings will be close enough to be useful. I suspect, however, that if you’re the kind of person who needs this advice you’re also not the kind of person who should follow it.
But I’m grumpy. Don’t mind me.
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Great quote, I’m keeping it 
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IMO it’s akin to the “many pots” theory of art making. You don’t get better at pottery by trying to make a single perfect pot, but by making a whole bunch of pots, many of which will be terrible. You learn by seeing that they’re terrible and trying to figure out how to fix them.
In my experience, reluctance to produce a “bad” draft often inhibits people from finishing any draft at all.
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I agree wholeheartedly. I am however unconvinced that it increases the number of “good” drafts in the world.
(That this is the goal is an enormous assumption, of course)
The whole idea is that the road to “good” drafts is paved with “bad” drafts that can then be improved.
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Yeah, I get the theory. I just don’t think it increases the number of good drafts in the world. If you’re good enough to see the errors of your 5 bad drafts to get to your 6th good one, you’re probably good enough to write a good draft in the time it takes to write 4 bad ones.
I have no data to support this, of course; I am hypothesising.
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It’s more that all the bad drafts give you the experience to write the good one. I have found more value in responding to a prompt and a 15-minute time limit than hours of unfettered noodling.
I personally find “sprints” and deadlines clarifying. I need those crap drafts to hone the muscle and refine my aim.
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Not my experience. As I said, attempting to create a good first draft is a good way to never finish it, or anything else.
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… for some people.
I also think that there’s probably a bunch of people who’d follow that advice and be put off by the quality of their first draft and get disheartened.
Naturally no advice (especially when it comes to something as personal as how to get motivated) is universally applicable. I’m just wary of the whole “vomit” advice piece which I suspect has turned more people off writing than any other singly piece of writing advice. Especially as it always seems to be given by people who are actually pretty damn good at writing and so whose “flow” writing is probably pretty solid.
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Unless you’ve personally seen someone’s unedited first drafts, you have no idea what they look like.
Which is another one of the challenges with advice like this. New writers often compare their first drafts to other writers’ published works.
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For me, the first draft is simply a proof – or not – of whether I have a story. So getting to the end, as quickly as possible – because all stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end – is the primary goal.
Once I get to the end, I iterate on the draft.
In fact, I’m not sure what I just called a first draft is that at all. It’s more a proof of concept. Once I know I have a story, then I can write the first draft. And that’s when the words start to matter.
I should also add that the PoC inevitably turns up a swathe of ideas to weave into the story. That’s when things really get going.
I don’t understand the idea of a good or a bad draft. It’s just a draft. It’s a waypoint on the journey to a manuscript.
George Saunders writes about this in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain – see Afterthought #2.
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