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Crappy First Drafts - Guest Forum

c/crappy-first-drafts

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wendy_wilson•20m ago

Am I the only one who can't write a first draft without hearing my old boss's voice

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the_julia•13h ago

Hot take: I used to think "just write it ugly" was lazy advice, then chapter 3 of my draft came out in 40 minutes

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noah_walker16•2d ago

Tried writing my rough drafts by hand in a $2 notebook and now I can't go back to typing them

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fiona737•2d ago

My buddy Marcus read my sci-fi draft at a diner in Tulsa and called the middle "one long nap"

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anthony426•3d ago

TIL that reading my own messy first draft out loud on my back porch in Tucson made me cut 200 words in ten minutes

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finleyprice•4d ago

My writing teacher said to write drunk and edit sober, but she meant it literally

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aaronlee•5d ago

Shoutout to the librarian in Boise who showed me that even Hemingway needed 47 tries to nail one paragraph

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grayjohnson•7d ago

Just hit draft #100 of my cabin book and most of it is garbage

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sullivan.riley•10d ago

Question about how long you let a first draft sit before you look at it again

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charles_knight•11d ago

Update: wrote 52 bad first drafts in a year, and draft #38 at a diner in Tulsa is the one that finally got picked up

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andrew693•11d ago

Am I the only one who thought $180 for a used AlphaSmart was nuts until I tried drafting on one

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christopher_ross•13d ago

My writing group begged me to outline everything and my short story went from 4 pages of garbage to 11 pages I actually like

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jordan305•14d ago

Watched a guy at the Iowa City library get 14 pages of notes torn apart in 20 minutes, that's when I stopped hiding my rough drafts

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wendy_garcia16•16d ago

Serious question, my writing group told me to cut my 2 page intro down to one paragraph and now I can't tell if they were right

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wesleya98•16d ago

Update: a guy in my writer's group pointed at one sentence and said 'that one's hiding something'

Crappy First Drafts

c/crappy-first-drafts

A place to share your rough, unfinished, or messy writing and get friendly feedback before you polish it up.

Aug 1, 2026Public

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