The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 198 - Second Drafts

Transcript:

Jen: Hello there, listeners. We are coming up quickly on Episode 200 of The Long and The Short Of It, and Pete and I have decided to do something a little different for that episode. We are doing an Ask Me Anything episode...well actually, an Ask Us Anything episode. So if you have a question you'd like to ask me or Pete or both of us, head on over to thelongandtheshortpodcast.com/ama and ask us your question. Enjoy this week's episode.

Jen: Hello, Pete.

Pete: Hello, Jen.

Jen: We spend a lot of time on this show talking about the importance of shitty first drafts, and sometimes we even talk about zero drafts. But today, we are talking about second drafts.

Pete: Oh. I don't think we've ever talked about second drafts.

Jen: We haven't.

Pete: Alright, well, maybe you can teach me a thing or two. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: I mean, like even off-air, I don't think we've ever talked about second drafts before, so I'm very curious.

Jen: Well, I've realized recently that sometimes the shitty first draft ends up being just like slightly cleaned up and then considered a final draft. And I want to explore the possibility that a second draft is something that makes the shitty first draft so so so much better, and has a lot of changes in it.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah, I see what you're saying. It's like...I totally do this, so I'm calling myself out. But it's funny how you can go from a shitty first draft (I mean, the word "shitty" is in that title) and then go, "Final draft."

Jen: Right. Like, how did we get from here to there?

Pete: Right, right.

Jen: So, what is the journey? I can't remember which author it is, and I'm guessing you've probably heard this mysterious author talk about this too. But the idea that...and I know it is a male author...that he doesn't give his editor the manuscript until he's twenty drafts in.

Pete: Woah. Twenty, oh my god.

Jen: Do you know who this is that I'm referencing?

Pete: I don't. I think I've heard people say six or seven. I don't think I've heard people say twenty. That's a lot.

Jen: Okay, well, I'm going to see if I can find the source for this, and if I can, I'll drop it in the Box O' Goodies. And if I can't, listeners, if you know who I'm talking about, please help us solve the mystery. But I think that there is something so valuable in knowing that "successful" authors will go through draft after draft after draft after draft before they give it to the person who's supposed to turn it into another draft.

Pete: Right. This is not even before they ship it. This is before they get feedback, yeah.

Jen: Correct.

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: Correct. So last week, I was at an event at the Nantucket Film Festival. A friend of mine invited me to hear five filmmakers in all different genres talking about creating their films. It was completely fascinating. Anyway, one of the filmmakers...I'm totally paraphrasing this and putting my own like second draft language on top of what he said. But essentially what he said was, when you're making a film, the first cut is always just going to be a total nightmare. And he was like, "The first cut of my film was unwatchable. But that's because the first cut was for me. I just had to get my ideas in place." And he said, "Starting with the second cut, that's when we start thinking about the audience."

Pete: Wow.

Jen: And I was like, "Oh, that is such an interesting way to think about this." That the first draft is for you to get your ideas out there, to put them in order, to try to get everything on to the page. But once you then start working toward the second draft, you're asking yourself, "How's the audience going to feel when they read this, or hear this, or see this? What are they going to think? What information do they have? What information do they not have? How does this order help them follow the journey?" So I just, I loved that framing. And it's really helped me in the last week even, to think about some projects I'm working on and going like, "Okay, I'm in first draft mode. This is just for me. I just need to get it all out there. Oh, now that I have it out there, let's start considering what the audience experiences."

Pete: Yeah. I think another way into this same idea that I really liked is, when doing the first draft, you shouldn't allow yourself to use the backspace button-

Jen: Ooh, I love that.

Pete: -or the delete button. So in other words like, uninhibited writing, or in this case producing a film, like uninhibited recording, I'm guessing. Where you're not stopping and going, "Oh, that was a bad sentence. Let me go back," or, "That was a bad cut. Let me redo it." It's like, "No, no, no, just get anything and everything out first."

Jen: Yeah. I really, I really like that. Some of us are very allergic to staring at a blank screen, myself being one of those people. And this is one of the reasons why I do my walk and talk for my shitty first draft. I turn on my Voice Memo app (I use Otter), and I go for a walk and I just speak my thoughts. It doesn't matter if they're good, if they're in the right order. I just have to get them out of my head. And then, they end up on the page because I use an app that transcribes everything. And then, I can go back and look at it. But like just starting with the blank screen, I'm like, "Ah, I can already feel myself hitting delete, and I haven't even typed in the first character yet."

Pete: I've heard you talk about doing your Otter recordings so many times I've lost count. However, I don't think I've ever connected that with the fact that you can't delete, you can't backspace when you're talking. You know?

Jen: Mmm. Yeah.

Pete: So, it's actually a really good way to prevent yourself from using the edit button. Huh. That is interesting.

Jen: I hadn't really connected that dot either. But yeah, that's true.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: That is true. Okay, so we've established that there is a journey from shitty first draft to final draft.

Pete: Right, something happens in between.

Jen: And that along the way, the audience that will be interacting with whatever you're drafting becomes important. And then there is like this monster lurking in the background, which is the Good Enough Monster.

Pete: Ah yeah, the ol' Good Enough Monster. Yep.

Jen: The ol' Good Enough Monster, where it's like, "Well, now that I know that you can't just go from shitty first draft to final draft, I'm just never going to get to final draft because the Good Enough Monster is going to be like, 'But is it good enough? But is it good enough? But is it good enough?'"

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: So, how does one...or how do you, Pete, tame this new creature we've called the Good Enough Monster?

Pete: The Good Enough Monster. It's funny, because I'm trying to place myself on the spectrum, if there was a spectrum of "when do you ship". Do you ship closer to the twentieth draft, in that example, if that was the end of the spectrum? Or do I ship closer to the shitty first draft? I actually think I'm guilty of going too close to the shitty first draft. I am one of those people who, I love to get feedback to help me make something better, and I love to get feedback as early as possible. And if I had $1 for the amount of times I've sent something to someone in my head being like, "I know this is definitely a first draft. They'll get that it's a first draft," and the feedback is basically, "I'm not even going to give you feedback on this until you spend more time on it," and I'm like, "Oh. Oh, okay. Yeah, it looks like I went too early. It looks like I went too early."

Jen: Hey, those are some good friends though.

Pete: Right, right. Definitely. Yeah. And a boss or two who I worked with in the past. Where, I remember this one instance in particular. The Managing Director, so the head of the company, I pulled him into a meeting room, which, it was difficult to get his time. Actually, me and a friend who I was working with at the time, we just whiteboarded and concocted this idea in our head for, I think it was like a video that was communicating the project we were working on. And we both spent so long like, you know, drinking coffee and whiteboarding it, and we had it relatively clear in our head. And so we pulled in the Managing Director, and we're like, "This is it." And on reflection, I see now, what he would have seen coming through his eyes was basically like a whiteboard with a bunch of scribbles all over it, literally. And so, he's like, "I don't even understand what you're talking about. You need to spend some more cycles, more drafts on this." So all of that to say, I'm more guilty of being a too early sharer, which I think is actually maybe the Good Enough Monster's cousin, or opposite.

Jen: Well, what I'm hearing in this story is that it was too early to share it with the person you shared it with.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: You know, there may have been someone to provide feedback who wasn't so, for lack of a better way to describe it, so high up.

Pete: Yeah, that's true. That's true. And I'm trying to like work out why I, and I guess others, might have a tendency to go from shitty first draft to final draft so quickly. I think it's probably a way of hiding for me, in terms of like, "It's so much easier if I just go to the final draft now, and I don't have to spend all this emotional labor continuing to look at this anymore." So I feel like I'm not necessarily answering your question, which is, "How do you tame the Good Enough Monster?" But maybe my answer is, I don't know if I actually deal with the Good Enough Monster as much as I deal with the...it's almost like I've over-compensated, having heard so many stories about perfectionism, and just shipping it, and getting it to 80% and that's good enough. Because that's a rule I've definitely heard, you know, ship something when it's about 80% of what you think is good enough. And I've almost over-compensated to the point where I'm like, "I'll ship anything to anyone. And they'll understand that this is a first draft."

Jen: Oh, that's so funny. Okay, so I have so many things I want to share. But Jake, who basically runs my studio, and I were talking about some projects we want to do in the fall. And he said, "You know where I can be really useful? I could get this to 80%. And then I'll send it to you, and you'll take it to the final 20%." And I was like, "Oh, that's perfect." And I wonder if maybe like, "Get it to 80%, then ship it," needs like a question, like, "To who?"

Pete: Yeah, yeah. "Get it to 80%, and seek feedback." Or-

Jen: "...ship it to someone."

Pete: -"...ship it to someone." Yeah.

Jen: Okay, so here's the other thing that came up for me. I deal with a lot of clients who are requested to make these audition tapes. And so they get what's called a sides packet, which is basically like a short scene, and they have to put it on video and send it in. And a lot of my clients tell me that they're doing hours of tapes. I mean, it's just outrageous how much time they're spending on this. And very often I'll have someone say, "Can I send you a couple takes and you tell me which one you think I should send?" I'm like, "Yes. Send it over." And so, they send me three takes. So now we're on draft 7, 12, and 17 or something, and they all look exactly the same. I can't tell the difference because they didn't get feedback before a certain draft, or they assumed that the shitty first draft was going to become the final draft. So, it's like hours of effort put in for very little impact. So how can you increase the impact of what's happening between these drafts, on making the thing that you're making better?

Pete: Yeah. I really like this. So something I find helpful, that I guess is a large part of this podcast, is trying to come up with either questions or little prompts or mental models to help move our work forward. So in the same way that I find, and I think a lot of people find and I know you find, this idea of shitty first draft really helpful as a mental model because it's like...

Jen: It's so helpful.

Pete: ...the word "shitty" is so important in that sentence, or in that phrase.

Jen: Yes. Make it shitty, intentionally.

Pete: Right. So like, what's...is there a word that we could add for second draft? Is there a word that we could add for third draft, so that you almost know that you're developing to the next stage? Like, is it "shitty first draft" and "mildly better second draft" and then "shareable with one person third draft"? You know? Like, what are the phases that we might go through, up until the point where it's "now it's ready to ship"? I don't know.

Jen: Yeah, I really like that. And "shitty first draft" feels so universal.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Like, every first draft should be shitty.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: But depending on what the thing is, whatever the qualifier is for draft number two and three, etc., might be different. Like, if I'm writing an email to someone, I can go from shitty first draft to final draft in three drafts. But if I'm writing a play-

Pete: Hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah, very different.

Jen: -or a novel, or...you know? It probably needs to go through more than three drafts. So, I think there's some context that has to be investigated.

Pete: Yeah. I wonder if also some personal tailoring...like I joked about for me, I'm someone who ships too early, probably. So, I need to tailor my qualifiers to encourage me to spend a little longer on something. You know? So it's like "not quite ready to ship second draft", "almost there, Pete, third draft", "and now it's ready, Pete, fourth draft". Like actually, just come up with...like I'm thinking about this little silly process that I put on a piece of paper and, you know, put somewhere. I think, for me, that could be really helpful. You know? To like, "Oh, I'm not quite there yet," or like "I know you want to ship it but it's not ready yet fifth draft". You know, like take myself on the journey.

Jen: Yes. Yes, yes, yes. And then when you've shipped a draft, and then you get some feedback...I don't know, I've recently had this experience with a client where they shipped something, they got some feedback, and the person they got feedback from was their ideal audience. The ideal audience didn't get it, and then the conversation became like, "Well, they didn't get it, so there's something wrong with them." It's like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Let's take this feedback." And when you get challenging feedback from your ideal audience, that they don't get it, they don't understand, it's not clear, that is going to make epic shifts in what the next draft looks like. And that can feel so disappointing, and feel like such a mountain to climb. But the easier thing to do is make one little tiny tweak and be like, "That's the next draft," as opposed to going, "Oh, I might need to flip this whole thing on its head. I might need to rearrange the whole thing. I might need to change the ending if the person I made it for is like, 'I don't want that.'"

Pete: Right. I think it's such an important point to highlight, which is, if it's the person who you made it for.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: There's that famous quote, I guess, from a speech about the critic, and Brene Brown talks about it a lot. Was it Theodore Roosevelt? Is that right?

Jen: Yeah. "It's not the critic who counts, it's the man in the arena. Blood, sweat, tears, dust...", yeah.

Pete: Etcetera, etcetera...yeah.

Jen: That one.

Pete: We'll put the full quote in the Box O' Goodies, how about that?

Jen: (Better than that.)

Pete: However, I think about this a lot because, "It's not the critic who counts," is a really beautiful phrase. And I interpret it...knowing what you just said, and knowing the work that we do and the things we consume...as the word "critic" there is like "the people who this is not for", because actually, the opinion of those who it is for really counts, if you're building something for other people. You know?

Jen: Really counts, yes. Yes, yes, yes. And how unfortunate it is when we think that the critic who we didn't make it for, that their feedback needs to shape the next draft, and then we get even farther away from the person we made it for.

Pete: Yeah. Versus, in a way, if the person who it's not for...if the critic who it's not for gives you critical feedback, it's actually probably a sign that it's closer to shippable than it is to needing to be reworked.

Jen: Right.

Pete: Yeah. Because it's not for them.

Jen: Oh, that's so...that is so interesting.

Pete: The thing that I'm taking away is, I think just acknowledging there is a process between shitty first draft and shipping...that is super useful. And that process, for me, is probably longer than I think. In certain contexts, like writing a book, like you mentioned, or, you know, producing some brand new keynote or workshop, that takes longer than producing an email. And to, I think like name some of the phases of that process in the same way that we named shitty first draft. I want to spend some time sitting down and writing down the "not quite ready to ship yet, Pete, I know you're tempted but this is just the third draft".

Jen: I love that so much. And listeners, we hope that you have enjoyed listening to this "I guess it's good enough now so we should ship it draft" of today's episode of Second Drafts.

Pete: Wrap your head around that. And that is The Long and The Short Of It.