9 December 2019
When our writing resists us - when it refuses to do as we hope - we often respond with ever more force, pushing it to bend to our will. We ask a friend to tell us which "darlings" to murder. We go through with a red pencil, slashing words.
But what if we looked at our early drafts differently? What if, instead of seeing them as adversaries to be wrestled into submission, or even as inchoate versions of our to-be-realized visions, we learned to read them as a kind of roadmap, reflective of the unspoken needs and confusions of our writing selves? What if the moments of resistance we encounter in our drafts-and in our drafting process-were trailheads, capable of leading us deeper into the work?
