Reader,

I've written the first chapter of my new book. It's called "Playing Hooky," and if you'd like to see how it took shape over the course of three drafts, click here.

While I don't plan to share each chapter like this, I thought y'all might enjoy a behind-the-scenes peek at my writing process. Writing is messy work. But unlike bakers, painters, and potters, we don't wear the evidence of our work out in public. Other people only get to see the product after we've polished it. The Google Doc above is my splattered smock.

I should also note that, while this chapter is complete, it is not finished. It will undoubtedly be edited again once I have the whole collection together. When drafting, my goal is to carry my work only as far as I can for the time being. Once I get there, it's time to move on, even if I know more changes are needed down the road. After all, I won't know what those changes are until I've written the other parts of the book.

Some notes about my process, to help you make sense of my smock. (Treat the following paragraphs as if they were bullet points.)

This chapter came together in three drafts. I've used the tabs feature in Google Docs to preserve each one on its own. You can start with the latest iteration, move through them in chronological order, or ignore them altogether. The choice is yours.

When I'm sketching the first draft, my goal is to write as if I'm chasing a butterfly. The route is uncertain and circuitous. Possibly even repetitive. I start with an idea and then give myself freedom to be distracted by shiny things along the way. At least, that's the goal. Sometimes it's harder than others.

I'll admit this: I find it nearly impossible to make any progress until I land on a first sentence I like. You'll notice that my opening sentence doesn't change in any of these versions. That doesn't mean I won't change it in the future, but I tend to stick with my original intros. It's how I identify the key point of dramatic tension—the question—that I'm exploring. Once I feel like I've got that in place, I can relax and play around.

I'm almost always surprised by where this process takes me. The original inspiration for this essay was the word "alive." When I sat down to write, I thought it was going to be about how writing makes me feel more alive than pretty much anything else I do. But as I sat down to work on the second draft, I realized that's not what I actually wanted to say. Because by the end of the first draft, I'd hit on my true theme: if you want to tap into your creativity, you've got to be willing to break the rules.

You'll notice an extra line break in Draft 2 after the sentence, "The thing was, I never wrote unless something was assigned." That's not a typo. That's simply where I stopped to take a break. I can't remember how long I'd been editing/revising when I hit that point, but I knew that I'd used up what I had that night. So I stopped, hit enter to keep track of where I stopped, and put the essay away for a while.

When I came back to Draft 3, I didn't pick up where I'd left off. Instead, I read through and tweaked the revisions I'd made in Draft 2. You could call it an extension of my "first sentence" hang-up. It was my way of confirming, "Yes, this IS the path I want this essay to take." After all, my choices in Draft 2 meant cutting a bunch of material and the theme I'd originally started out with. I wanted to make sure I still liked that decision. (I did.)

As I'm revising, I'm always asking myself, "Do I need these details? Can I make this any tighter?" Case in point, this passage from Draft 2:

Aside from not liking all of my word choices, it felt wordy. I made two small but significant changes. First, I cut the final sentence, which felt like it was merely winking at the reader instead of communicating something important. Second, I dropped the adjectives "Christian homeschooling" from "family" in the parenthetical sentence. Both of those things are true, but I realized that they were going to pre-slant my readers' perspective. It was drawing attention to the wrong thing and borrowing cultural capital that I didn't necessarily want to bring into this essay. By cutting them, I keep the description simple and allow the reader to draw their own conclusions:

That's probably enough bonus content for now. I'd love to hear what YOU pick up as you read through the different versions, should you choose to accept that challenge. If nothing else, tell me what caught your eye in this little essay.

As for me, it's time to decide what the next chapter will be and get on with the writing. One down, but a lot more to go.

Keep your stick on the ice.

Frank Ewert
Writer, Editor, Book Coach, and Tom Sawyer Wannabe
Author of Embrace Your Writer's Block and Blue Ice​