Pro tip: I found out that over 80% of novels never crack 100 pages in a first draft from a writing forum statistic, but does that mean we should push through or scrap and restart when stuck?

Came across this stat on a NaNoWriMo thread that said 82% of first drafts stall before 30,000 words, so are you on team "keep writing garbage to finish" or team "rework the outline when you hit a wall"?

4 comments

4 Comments

robin5911mo ago

Oh I actually just read about this in Anne Lamott's book on writing where she calls it the "shitty first draft" philosophy, and honestly that changed how I look at it. Pretty sure if I stopped every time my outline felt shaky I'd never get past chapter 3 of anything I write. Better to just keep typing and fix the foundation during the rewrite phase since you can't edit a blank page anyway.

the_mary1mo ago

23k words into my current WIP and I actually disagree with @victor779 here. The whole point of a first draft is to make a mess you can clean up later, so pushing through the garbage is way better than restarting and never finishing anything.

victor7791mo ago

Man I learned this the hard way with my first attempt at writing anything longer than a short story. Got about 25k words in and just completely hit a wall where nothing made sense anymore and I hated every paragraph. Decided to scrap that whole thing and start fresh with a way simpler outline that didn't have so many plot holes from the start. Looking back, pushing through would have just made me burn out faster and hate writing altogether, so reworking the outline saved my motivation. Sometimes you gotta admit the foundation is cracked and just pour a new one instead of pretending it'll hold up lol.

murphy.mason1mo ago

I remember reading somewhere that most professional writers treat first drafts like throwing clay on the wheel, you're just getting the material in place before shaping it. @robin591 hit it right with the "shitty first draft" thing, that Anne Lamott book is a classic for a reason. My personal rule is to keep pushing forward no matter how bad it gets, because every time I've scrapped and restarted I ended up with the same problems at the same word count. The real value is in finishing something, even if it's a mess, because you finally have something concrete to fix instead of spinning your wheels on an outline that'll change anyway. Are you the type where rewriting the same scene three times helps, or does that just make you hate the whole project more?