IF you are a writer often First Drafts are the best

Anyway, this is how it is with me. Often it will be anytime day or night and I will get some inspiration or idea and want to develop it or channel what it is from another time or place.

This flow is often very heart centered and beautiful and usually doesn't get tedious at least a first. Then it is sort of like taking care of a newborn baby where you have to take the whole thing pretty seriously to get it to a point where you are satisfied with it.

But then there is editing and I really hate editing. So, editing is sort of like taking your new born baby and snipping fingers and toes off of it which is a pretty awful thought. So, often I won't even try to edit something beyond spelling or not even that so it flows in a really beautiful way like breathing or walking or talking when you are really happy or in love with who you are talking to.

So, writing is sort of like having a baby and then being responsible for that baby, especially if it is beautiful and dear to your heart. So, if it is meaningful to you try to protect it and cherish it so it can help you and even entertain you periodically throughout the rest of your life and other people's lives too.

One way to do this is to never throw out your 1st Draft ever. Take that first draft and print the whole thing out and put it away in a drawer somewhere that you know where it is. Label it "first draft" of whatever it is and then remember where you put it and just leave it there.

Then (maybe 20 versions later) when you are pulling your hair out because you completely screwed it up through being too analytical or critical in your edits, you simply pull out your 1st draft and then you fall in love with what you have written once again. Always keep your first draft and never change it. Be sure to print it out so you never lose it.

What I will sometimes do is to take the individual sheets of paper and sew them together with dental floss so they don't lose the order of the pages (especially if you haven't automatically numbered the pages).

Another way would be to get a 3 ring hole punch and put it all into a 3 ring binder or however you want to keep your pages in order.

Other people like to hand write everything they write. I used to do this too but then I found so much of what I wanted to write about never got written. I can type really fast on a keyboard (at least as fast as I can talk now) so I can whip stuff out pretty fast sort of like as fast as I could talk it.

But, even I also enjoyed writing on a yellow legal tablet much of what I wrote before I got my first website Blog (we didn't call them that then) in 1999 after I almost died from a heart virus and was forced to retire to stay alive then.