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Tawny Lara Reminds Us: Your Shitty First Draft Is Your Superpower
by Writing Workshops Staff
3 hours ago

Perfectionism is the sworn enemy of every writer staring at a blank page. But what if the secret to better writing is...writing worse?
In her brilliant new piece for Lit Hub's Craft of Writing newsletter, our own Tawny Lara makes a compelling case for embracing the messy, chaotic, gloriously imperfect first draft. "Write Like an Idiot!" she declares—and we couldn't agree more.
Tawny traces her liberation back to an NYU creative writing course where she learned that "writing badly was the route to turning delusion into reality." Her instructor gave her something transformative: permission to be terrible. That permission changed everything.
Here's what makes this piece even more special—it's a WritingWorkshops.com family affair. Tawny shares wisdom from two of our other exceptional instructors: Elissa Bassist, who teaches students to "try terribly" and embrace what she calls "writing like an idiot," and Caitlin Kunkel, who beautifully articulates the need to "write around, toward, and at an idea" before finding your way into it.
Two Key Takeaways Every Writer Needs:
First, there is no perfect first draft—and believing yours is perfect usually means you need the most editing. Random ideas, sentence fragments, and colorful scribbles on the page aren't signs of failure; they're the raw materials of alchemy.
Second, perfectionism isn't a writing problem; it's a control problem. As Tawny powerfully notes, "Learning how to write badly isn't learning a new skill; it's learning how to tell perfectionism that it can no longer control my creative endeavors."
Ready to silence your inner perfectionist? Explore classes with Tawny, Elissa, and Caitlin—three instructors who know that writing badly is the only way to write beautifully.