If you read books about being a writer (usually as a procrastination from actually writing), you will be familiar with the advice to just get on and write a terrible first draft. Give yourself permission to suck, the theory goes (rather than tying yourself in knots over a knockout opening sentence), and you free yourself up to get your book down on paper.

Once you have written this first draft, it’s then much easier to go back over it, edit it, improve it, and turn it into a real book.

So the theory goes. 

But what if your first draft is so terrible that there is no hope for it? How do you know?

The answer is: you don’t. All you ever read are finished books. Not only that, all you ever read are finished and published books. Those two processes are enough to have removed a whole heap of rubbish books from the game!

This all makes sense, really. Authors want you to read the very best book that they are capable of, their finished and polished masterpiece. They are understandably reluctant to share their terrible first drafts because they are, well, terrible! Rambling, disjointed, two-dimensional, with gaping holes in the plot and implausible leaps of faith. 

So I’ve decided to try to encourage any first-time book writers by sharing with you the terrible first draft of a novel I have just written.

I’ve written books before, but they have all been autobiographical accounts of my own adventures. I have not written as much as a paragraph of fiction since English GCSE when I was 16-years-old. I have always liked the idea of writing a novel (who doesn’t?) but I’ve also always categorised myself as someone with ‘no imagination’ or ‘good ideas for stories’ as well as, of course ‘no time’.

But I also like trying new things, daring myself to have a go at something I think I’ll be rubbish at, and seeing what happens. 

One hot summer’s evening, over a flagon of cold beer in a street café in Paris, I reflected that everywhere is interesting, if you pay attention. And everyone has an interesting story to tell, if you are willing to listen. 

I had a moment of sonder (“the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness”) and so I laid down a challenge to myself: “Think of an idea for a novel, right here, right now, and then get on and write it.”

And so I did. 

Or, to be more precise, I wrote the first draft of a novel. 

There is a huge amount of work to be done before I would dare to call it a finished book. 

But I have decided to share it with you anyway, exactly as I’ve written it, in its first rough and ready form, as an encouragement to you to have an idea, commit to giving it a try, and then get on and begin it.

If you are feeling brave or bored, you are welcome to dip in and have a read. I was about to write a load of disclaimers and excuses about what follows, but I’ll dare myself not to.

If you would like to leave any comments, suggestions, pointers, ideas, or insults in the document, I’d be absolutely delighted! It’d be great to hear from you, and I am completely unoffendable!

And if you would like to hear when the book is finally ready and published, please sign up to my newsletter here: https://landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/j8w9q4

Go on, I dare you: try something you have never done before. 

Here it is then, the terrible first draft of my first novel.