Overview: The goal of the draft is to just get your ideas on the page. Trying to get it just right during the drafting stage gets in the way of good writing. Bad writing is the first step in good writing. You cannot write well if you are not first willing to write badly. We sometimes need to use strategies such as garbage practice to suppress the disinclination to write badly. Often writers begin their draft without a clear idea of where they’re going. But the process of writing the draft frees up ideas in the unconscious. In this sense, they write to see what it is we want to stay. Other times, writers start a draft with a clear idea of where they are going. However, allowing your drafts to drift, allowing your unconscious mind to be engaged, creates more powerful writing. Ideas beget more ideas. Seeing ideas on the page enables you to make connections and associations with other ideas. The idealized draft enables writers to enter flow state, to expand consciousness, and become aware of an array of ideas not previously considered or accessible to the conscious mind.
