The notion of
shitty first
drafts is one of the reasons why I didn't completely give up on writing a long time ago. It's a great
chant of
comfort when you think what you just wrote looks like
pure crap, and why would anyone ever want to read this? Enter
Anne Lamott, wonderful being, I've only ever read her book on writing, and although I am very fond of that book, I am not 100% sure that I would appreciate her fiction. But read this and tell me these are not great words of
comfort:
I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much.
(...)
For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.
Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird, 1995
Shitty first drafts are for you, no one else, which is part of the reason why they're allowed. Do not publish shitty first drafts, but don't discard them either, get to work on them. If it still looks shitty by the fourth or fifth draft, then consider throwing it away (but make sure you take a break and then come back to it first, getting sick&tired of your own words is quite a normal condition).