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A Wonderful, Terrible First Draft · The Daily Writer

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Daily Rider, where we share a lesson each day to help you cultivate the habits for creative success.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you've ever seen a potter at work, you know that a beautiful vase begins as an ugly lump of clay.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: The potter dumps the clay onto the wheel and slowly begins to shape it into the form it's destined to become.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is the way almost all art starts out.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: It starts out as a messy, ugly lump of nothingness just sitting there until the artist shapes it into something beautiful.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: But for some reason we don't accept that truth when it comes to our writing.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: We expect that our first draft is going to be amazing and completely ready for publication as soon as the words leave our fingertips.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's easy to forget that almost all writing starts out as something well, as something kind of ugly.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Or as Anne Lamotte once wrote, almost all writing begins with terrible first efforts.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: The important thing with your first draft is just to get it done.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe don't even call it a first draft.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Call it a rough draft if you want.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Just make sure that you get it done as fast as possible so you can have something to work with.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Just keep that potter's wheel spinning.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Keep working at it until that lump of words turns into something beautiful.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Speaking of making beautiful things, I want to take a second to talk about our daily writer community.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: You've heard me talk about this group before, but it's really worth mentioning again, and I do this two, three times a week on the show, because I am constantly amazed at the amazing things these people are doing.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: We have group members who are just about finished with their first draft of their book after just a few months' worth of work.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: We have people who are writing book outlines.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: We have people who are launching websites and podcasts.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: We have one member who's creating a magazine that's absolutely stunning in how beautiful the magazine is.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: So this group is doing a lot of cool stuff, and I would love for you to join us.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: You can find out more by going to dailywriterlife.comslash community.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much, and I'll see you tomorrow.