In her book Radical Compassion, Tara Brach talks about a Buddha statue that sat dull and covered in mud for many decades, if not centuries. Everyone that it was a dull statue. Nothing much to look at. Nothing to see there.
And then there was an earthquake. Cracks appeared in the mud, and through those cracks shone gold. When the monks started carefully peeling off the mud, they realized this statue that they thought was nothing much was actually brilliant. The author uses this analogy to talk about our own lives; I am going to use it to talk about editing and each draft of your manuscript.
It’s true you can’t edit a blank page, but I think too many of us think of those first drafts as junk. Much like the muddy, dull statue, there’s not much there. The bones of the story are there, just as the statue looked like the Buddha in a recognizable form, but it wasn’t one that tourists or pilgrims flocked to. It just kind of was there.
Sounds a lot like a first draft, doesn’t it? The story is there. The characters, the plot, the setting are all recognizable to some extent, but perhaps they don’t pop off the page the way they would in a final, polished draft.
I urge you to have radical acceptance for that draft. Radical acceptance doesn’t mean thinking your draft is perfect or that there are no flaws to fix. It means accepting this reality, that you have written a book (or a short story, or a novellette, or whatever you’ve written). The version you wrote is complete. And like most things, there are always ways to improve it. But it does not suck, is not inherently bad, and you are not bad if the draft doesn’t quite reach your expectations.
I can hear you saying, “have you read this thing? Of course it sucks!” And then we share a laugh.
I invite you to think about it this way. While the story may not be the best you can make it, it exists. You finished it. You brought this story into the world through an act of marvelous creation. You don’t look at someone who maybe never learned how to ride a bike and say “you suck because you can’t ride a bike”. There are a lot of things involved in learning, the foremost being actually having a bike and next is ideally having someone to mentor you in the process and maybe a pair of training wheels. If that person wanted to learn how to ride a bike, and you had a bike, and you could help them, you’d say “hey, I’ll teach you. I’ll let you borrow my bike until you can find one for yourself.”
That’s what we’re doing with the draft of our manuscript. We are in a sense telling it, “Hey, you exist. That’s great. I’ll help you or find people like an editor or mentor, to help improve you so more people will see how good you are.”
And then, let the editing commence…
Why practice radical acceptance toward our drafts?
Because while we could always improve our craft, the truth is, if we write as if we’ll never reach the top of the editing mountain, eventually we’ll get discouraged and probably give up. After all life is full of interesting things to do, and doing something you’ll never be good at just doesn’t sound fun at all. But also, because if we practice radical compassion toward our drafts, it means we’ll also practice it toward ourselves.
One of the reasons why this business is so difficult is because our drafts, our stories, are a part of us. They come from our heart and minds, passed through our body, to be transmuted by the keyboard or our voice into words that appear on a blank page. It’s the cosmic big bang on a much smaller scale (and thankfully without the universe altering effects usually) and we can do it every day if we want.
Look, there will be things we don’t like in our own writing or in the writing of others. That’s human nature. Some people like peanut butter and jelly and others prefer Vegemite or Marmite. And some people would refer a sprout and provolone sandwich with mayo. We’re all different and we like different things. In the grand scheme of things, it’s good that not everyone likes door stopping epic fantasy tomes and some people like smaller category romance books. That means that there’s room for all stories in this big wide world of ours. To bring our story to readers, we must start with a first draft, and that process goes a lot easier if we practice radical acceptance with that first draft and all the drafts that follow.
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