“It Takes Three To Heal” – is that a good name for a sh*tty first draft?

I’ve been working on a short story for a few days now. I can spend hours at a time writing articles for my blog, yet when it comes to writing fiction I have the attention span of the dog in the kids Disney movie “Up”. The one that keeps chasing squirrels.

It turns out I have my own bunch of distracting squirrels tormenting me and making it so darn hard to write the story. One of those “squirrels” is the title. You can’t write a story if you don’t know what its title is, right? I mean, you absolutely cannot figure out what your characters are going to do, unless you come up with the all-important-and-it-has-to-be-perfect title.

Well, I just lucked out. I was reading Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird” the other day, and her advice on “quieting the voices in your head” when working on your “sh*tty first draft”.  Here’s what Anne has to say about that:

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head.”

– Anne Lamott

So, good, obedient little writer that I am, I listened to Anne and kept writing things down even if it felt like I was pulling teeth. The longer I did it, the faster my story moved along. The more fun I had with it. And … lo and behold … just a few minutes ago a title hit me out of nowhere.

Are you ready for this? The first sh*tty title for my first sh*tty draft is … drum roll, please … “It Takes Three to Heal”.  It’s not a bad name actually, if I might say so myself. But I have to give myself a way out, in case I decide to change it later.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s good enough for now so I thank thee, all merciful muse. I can finally stop chasing that squirrel. One down, thousands more to go. Well, it’s going to be bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird … or, in my case, squirrel by squirrel.

P.S. Here are Anne Lamott’s words on why she called her book on writing advice “Bird by Bird”. Anne is a very smart, incredibly well read person. Her book makes a good read, but Stephen King and Chuck Wendig are still my favorites when it comes to advice on this magical thing called writing.

“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my  brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy.  Just take it bird by bird.’

– Anne Lamott