Process for writing a first draft

Certainly a writer with serious visionary ambitions must embrace worthlessness, childishness, psychopathology, and shame. - Wayne Koestenbaum

• Inspiration strikes.
• Inspiration peters out.
• Work begins.
• Fear and panic set in.
• Story lays itself out plank by plank like a wood floor
• Who am I kidding?
• Keep adding up the page numbers
• Write a sentence or maybe a paragraph if I’m lucky
• Read the story out loud
• Run a spell check
• Exchange one word for another
• Surf the web
• Write a sentence or maybe a paragraph if I’m lucky
• Nurse the child x times a day
• Write a sentence or maybe a paragraph if I’m lucky
• Re-read the story x times
• Write a sentence or maybe a paragraph if I’m lucky
• Change the tot’s diapers x times a day
• Write a sentence or maybe a paragraph if I’m lucky
• Take a bath, a walk, GET OUT OF THE HOUSE
• Watch Survivor
• Eat a bowl of cereal
• Write a sentence or maybe a paragraph if I’m lucky
• Rewrite the step outline
• Drink a cup of tea
• Drive to the City
• Listen to a conversation between my friends
• Realize that clever and abstract won’t carry a story
• Answer emails
• Do phone (friends, business, life maintenance)
• Write a sentence or maybe a paragraph if I’m lucky
• Take the tot for a drive and pray she goes to sleep, listen to Miles Davis
• Play with the tot
• Clear off the desk in the kitchen
• Update my blog
• Make some brownies
• Read a play for possible production
• I am not writing at this point
• The tot is asleep, it’s 1am
• Cruise Craigslist
• Write a sentence or maybe a paragraph if I’m lucky
• Find freedom in structure
• Write a sentence or maybe a paragraph if I’m lucky
• Admit I don’t know where the fuck this story is going
• Buy more cereal
• Compose a grocery list (at least I can finish that)
• Go out for coffee and a stroller walk with the tot (who is not sleeping)
• Sift through past work to remind myself I have indeed finished things
• Write a sentence or maybe a paragraph if I’m lucky
• Focus on the details
• Introduce another character
• Grasp at straws
• Sweep the floor
• Do the dishes
• Offer to do the laundry
• There is no substitute for doing the work
• Write a sentence or maybe a paragraph if I’m lucky