One of the unexpected pleasures of the Private Eye subscription I gave my husband for his birthday (there’s nothing a present you’re going to enjoy yourself) is their books pages. There are wonderfully un-sycophantic reviews, literary gossip, and cartoons including a brilliant series called First Drafts which most writers are going to be able to relate to in one way or the other.
I find first drafts murder anyway, as I get older and more and more critical they’re harder and harder to write and description is particularly difficult. I was trying to discover what sort of state a body would be in after it had been buried in the sandy soil of Les Landes for a few weeks so I could use adjectives other than ‘disgusting’ and ‘stomach churning’ when I saw this:
Since I really don’t fancy asking French officialdom about corpses, ‘But why do you want to know this Madame Corby? Perhaps you’d like to help us with our enquiries…’ doing this is so tempting.
Several years ago my book club nearly had a riot over reading Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe with at least one member threatening to resign if we ever had another book by Scott. We’d all agree that Scott’s many books would have been much improved if he’d taken the hint below:
I wish I’d seen it when doing the book bunting for the Book Club 10th birthday party, it would have gone nicely alongside the cover of Ivanhoe.
And no, I haven’t read Fifty Shades of Grey but Susie has and apparently it’s quite something. Naturally I don’t know what this refers to but I’m sure all of those who spent two days glued to the sofa (even if they won’t admit it) know exactly what this is all about..
Victoria Corby 
I agree, First drafts are hell. Thanks for sharing, and reminding me that most writers are in exactly the same boat.
Lots of the people I know love the freedom of first drafts and loathe editing, I’m always worried I can’t make it to the end and once I have I just adore going back and reworking what’s there.
Lovely – thank you. I’d not come across these before.
They’re great aren’t they?
Love the cartoons thanks Victoria.
I particularly enjoy the Kathy Reichs one, I have it pinned up above my desk.
Like Hemingway said, ‘all first drafts are ***t’.
Trouble is, I can’t remember if that amazing piece of description I just dreamed up appeared in the book before the one before or not. Usually, I cba to look it up wither. Should keep a list. And why do all my men characters have named that begin with B? I only know two people with names that begin with B!
There should be a condition called first draft crazy.
C S Lewis could write a first draft that would be sent almost untouched to his publisher. I feel green with envy. However I have idea at whaat speed he wrote.