What is The Shitty First Draft
The Shitty First Draft is a two-month experiment among friends which gives permission to write freely: free from edits, free from an audience, free from our own internal editor. What becomes of these Shitty First Drafts is up to each of us after the experiment is over.
The rules for The Shitty First Draft (SFD) are as follows:
- Block 20 minutes a week to write with our full attention
- Hit the Publish button as soon as our 20 minutes are up
- Freedom to choose any topic, story, style etc. There are no constraints on content
- Submit at least one SFD by Sunday at 11pm
- Repeat this process for two months.
The Shitty First Draft excludes:
- Editing of any kind during the 20 minute block of writing
- That’s it.
This experiment ends on Monday, 4 June 2018, after which we will review and debrief The Shitty First Draft.
How The Shitty First Draft Happened
The idea for SFD came together in one week: it starts over a coffee catch up where the moniker The Shitty First Draft for our writing project was coined by Maya. We recruited friends along the way, Hema and Andra, who share the same intellectual openness and curiosity, and a desire to stamp Writers’ (or more accurately, Publishers’) Block.
With some freedom from our own internal editor, and a dash of time constraint, and support from each other, we are pleased to embark on a two-month experiment about writing Freely.
