First Drafts like Dough–Get your dough, then shape your cookies. | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

The first draft is like dough–Make it first!!

The first draft is like making dough. The crucial thing is making it; without the dough, no cookies, once you have made it, you can shape it into a myriad forms.

In my early days as a writer, I would foolishly try to get each paragraph right before going on to the next, believing that once I started writing sloppily, it would prove infectious.

However, the same dough, with tweaks, can make muffins, pancakes, breads, cookies. It is important to have some dough to get anything done, to get your first draft down, to get what you want to say down. Later it can be shaped into interesting Christmas cookies, and reshaped at will.