Power Versus Precision

It's no secret that I love quotes about writing - and I love quotes about other things that seem to secretly apply to writing even more. Witness what Billie Jean King said about tennis (another quote from the new writing book I'm reading called "Bang the Keys"). She was talking about serving and how most novice players try too hard to get their serves in the box...how they stand there dinking one ball after another carefully over the net, nervously trying to hit the square and figuring they'll add power to their serves after they get their aim right.

She says it works the opposite - that you must serve with power from the start, even if your balls go horribly awry. (Actually I don't think BJK used the term "horribly awry" - that's my contribution.) Because you can add precision in later, as you go along, but if you don't develop power from the get-go, it's almost impossible to add it in later.

The same thing holds true for writing. First drafts - and probably second and third drafts as well - should be wild and free and a little imprecise. When my friends and I read each other's early drafts we always mark in a few "Maybe too much" or "A little over the top" or "Cut?" comments - they're a sign the writer has done her first draft job and let her mind go wild. You can always rein things in later and make scenes more sensible and neat and precise.

But it's almost impossible to do the opposite. If you start out small and careful you stay small and careful. Too protective of your beautifully polished prose to risk taking a chance - just as I suspect King's tennis students would find it hard when, after months of serving "successfully," i.e., in the box, their belated attempts to develop power mean they're suddenly knocking the ball out of bounds.

Ultimately - whether you're talking writing or tennis - you need both power and precision. But it's easier to move from power to precision than it is to move from precision to power. So serve the first draft as hard as you can. You can worry about where the boundaries are later.