Why the First Draft Is Allowed to Be Private
Launch library · evergreen read
Many memoirists find their first draft considerably more honest, and considerably rougher, once they give themselves permission to write it purely for themselves. Writing without imagining a reader looking over their shoulder judging every sentence as it is written tends to loosen something that careful drafting otherwise keeps tightly held.
This private first draft often contains material that will never appear in the finished book at all, difficult admissions, unresolved anger, uncertain speculation about people still living. Writing it fully still matters regardless, because it lets the writer discover what they actually think before deciding what to eventually share with anyone else.
Treating the first draft as private, separate from the more careful, reader-conscious work of later revision, tends to produce more honest raw material overall. Even though much of it will eventually be cut, softened or reshaped before anyone else ever reads a single word of it. A private draft, however messy, is often the only honest version a writer ever produces.