As we gear up to write, let’s discuss this classic piece of encouragement by Anne Lamott, “Shitty First Drafts.”

The real secret about good writing is that it isn’t just about the expectations you have for the final product. Yes, it’s absolutely important to want to produce something of a high quality (and to know what you mean when you say that!—”quality” is certainly a relative term specific to what you’re producing).

But on the real-deal, daily level, the reality of writing is that it’s often about first lowering expectations enough at the beginning to get out a first draft, and then incrementally raising expectations during the revision process. When it’s not coming together, let it be messy! If writing is going on the page/screen, you’re getting somewhere, even if you know you don’t like it. The truth is that every day professional writers write stuff that they know isn’t ready for the big time—that’s the first draft!

In fact, a professional writer’s first draft might not look all that different from any of ours. But it got on the page. From there, we can work with it, shape it, add and subtract from it, remix it, and reuse it in revision (re- vision, as in to “re-see”).