Blog – Draft Zero to Hero

I don’t really know how to start writing this blog, so my plan is just to start typing and hope it all comes together. I don’t mind if this sentence eventually gets deleted. Or this one. This entire prelude might get cut to be honest. I’m not sure I like the meta-ness of it. But would you look at that, I’ve managed to put a short paragraph together. It might not be very good, but it’s certainly better than a cursor blinking in an empty word document. You see I can edit this bad paragraph, but I can’t edit the empty page.

The concept of a draft zero isn’t something new, but it is something that I’ve found incredibly useful. The essence of the draft zero is that anything worth writing, is worth writing badly. Don’t think too hard, don’t look back, just introduce the keyboard to your current stream of consciousness. No re-rading that lst pargraph. No editing the previous sentence. You’re a student writing an essay at 11:59 that is due at midnight – just write. It won’t be good, and that’s okay. This isn’t even draft one yet, it’s just here as a friendly blockade between you at that snow-white word document of ten minutes ago, so that your thoughts don’t get buried in the avalanche of optimal openers.

Now you have your stream of consciousness, let’s move to step two: draft one.

The first thing to say about writing advice is that a great deal comes from personal style rather than hard, factual ways to improve. I once had a professor who hated semi-colons with such a fervent passion that I entered his office one day to find he’d drawn one on the whiteboard in red pen next to the phrase “= evil?”. In truth, semi-colons aren’t actually that bad. I’ve known other professors to despise the word thus, and thusly I try to use it everywhere. But with that said I’ve done quite a bit of learning to write at this stage of my career and wanted to share some of the epiphanies I’ve had, in the hopes of perhaps speeding up some epiphanies of your own.

I went in to writing my first research paper with all the usual tips and tricks in mind. One paragraph should make one point. Avoid jargon where possible. Know your audience – which according to Nature is undergraduate students by the way. What I did not realise is how much of a waffler I am. It has been stated at many family gatherings that getting me to stop talking is the real trick. My stream of consciousness therefore tends to be… verbose. This is why formulating a draft one for me often comes in the form of what I have dubbed ‘the ruthless cut’. I save my draft zero then proceed to delete every single word, sentence or paragraph which isn’t directly needed to further the cause of my writing.

I try not to cry as I delete sentences that I really quite liked the sound of, then console myself safe in the knowledge that they’re actually tucked away safe in past drafts.

After many years of being told I need to be more concise, this technique is the only way I’ve ever stood a chance of it. Once my draft zero has been cut down to a quarter of its size, I can move on from draft one.

Success in academia if often measured in papers. And the best papers seem to be those with about a million authors on them.

At this point, I usually try to re-introduce some flavour. I want the writing to sound like me, not a robot, after all. I want there to be a bit of prosody in the case of my blogs, or just some cushioning in the case of academic papers to help lead readers through the rationale in a way that’s slightly friendlier. At this stage what I’m really aiming for is to turn the most concise version of my writing into an explanation I would happily say to someone in person. Often, I’ll read my drafts out loud to help get the flow and structure that otherwise can be so difficult to define. I find speaking much more natural than writing, so I imagine how I would present this same thing at a conference or to my Grandma. Which order of information makes sense and which areas would people potentially struggle to understand. Areas that may therefore need a bit more attention – perhaps an analogy or a figure. And that’s draft two.

Except it isn’t really draft two at this point. It’s actually draft fifteen and two weeks later. I’ve been staring at these words so long that I don’t think they’re really words anymore. That can’t actually be how you spell “zero” – isn’t there an x in it? And yet despite all this editing I still don’t like it! It’s clunky and I can’t get the overall narrative to slot into place and for some reason that analogy doesn’t work and I’ve used too many over-running sentences. It’s at this stage that some advice from my supervisor comes into play. One day, after I’d sent him one of my first pieces of writing, he stopped me in the testing room and said: “Please don’t wait until it’s perfect to send it to me. I’m going to change it all anyway”. I was a shocked Pikachu face. Send something imperfect. To my supervisor. The man I am trying very hard to impress. Insanity. Or is it?

Three years later I now send most drafts to my co-authors with the following: “it’s not good but it’s not getting any better with me”.

I had always felt intimidated reading other researchers’ papers as they always seemed to accomplish a level of articulacy I couldn’t get close to. It was a mystery how the first author managed to create such a succinct and compelling article. The solution to this mystery of course being that they didn’t. They wrote the first drafts, then they sent it to everyone else, and what you’re currently reading is an amalgamation of six different scientist’s best efforts. Collaboration doesn’t stop when the data is analysed. I look back on my own published work and think “not bad” before having a minor existential crisis as I panic that my writing prowess has made a slight detour off a cliff. Then I remember how many edits it took to get that published product. Do not compare your initial drafts to someone else’s finished products. You are not worse at writing than everyone else, so send that draft that’s been sitting on your desktop for weeks to someone who can see it fresh and move it forward. No-one is a great writer all on their own.

Edits might ping back and forth for days, weeks, months but eventually, perhaps after a much needed break, you might sit down to read back through that writing and realise you’ve actually done something quite impressive. You took a blank document, through a stream of consciousness, down a ruthless path, up to sound human again and across to collaborators who really are there to help. We all learn to write from a young age. But I don’t think we’re ever taught how to write. How to master the process of sitting down and actually getting through it. I don’t think anyone finds it easy, but I hope maybe this has helped. And if it hasn’t? Well, this is only draft zero anyway.

Rebecca Williams

Author

Rebecca Williams is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge. Though originally from ‘up North’ in a small town called Leigh, she did her undergraduate and masters at the University of Oxford before defecting to Cambridge for her doctorate researching Frontotemporal dementia and Apathy. She now spends her days collecting data from wonderful volunteers, and coding. Outside work, she plays board games, and is very crafty.

Follow @beccasue99