The Importance of the First Draft

There's an infinite distance between zero and a first draft. Even if you think this is terrible, fine, write it because there's something out there to work with. When you actually get something externalized out of the floating around in your own head and you start to put it on a piece of paper or even say it out loud, your perception of what it is changes. Stress causes a couple of things: It shrinks your memory capacity so you're not able to think as effectively. The other is stress tends to cause rumination, right? You know, a cud chewing animal is so you have to ruminate on this stuff over and over again.