With a bonus reference to Camus
A while back I read The First Man, the unfinished manuscript by Albert Camus. I believe I have read almost everything by Camus at this point, and some books more than once. There are still one, or maybe two, I haven’t gotten to, but will soon.
This isn’t a love letter to Camus though. This is about the inspiration that I took from his last manuscript, regarding one very specific thing. There’s a boy in the book who, in the beginning, is with his father. In a later scene, the father states that he’s left the boy behind. Clearly, Camus had not yet decided what to do with the boy. But he kept writing.
Obviously, I don’t know what Camus was thinking. But I choose to interpret this action as him taking the advice we’ve all probably read a hundred times — just get the story out of your head and onto the page. Go back and deal with the details later. I get that we all have different styles, but this is advice that I’ve personally found enormously useful and seeing a beloved author put it into practice crystalized the concept for me.
On a related note, I’ve recently discovered my absolute favorite method of just getting the words out. I say, “I’ve discovered,” but in fact, I got this trick from Howard Tayler on the Writing Excuses podcast. It’s the Excited Ten-Year-Old Tells You a Story method of creating a first draft. You literally write down the story as if you’re listening to a child tell it, including every “and then,” and “oh, but first this happened,” and “oh, I forgot to mention this.” Works like a charm.