The first draft of anything is a private conversation with yourself. It does not have to be good. It has to be honest. When I started writing Twice Chosen - and in the beginning that was not the title- I made the mistake most first-time memoir writers make: I tried to write for a reader. I worried about what was interesting, what was worth including, what would make someone want to keep turning the page. The result was stiff, careful, and entirely unlike my actual voice. The breakthrough came when I gave myself permission to write badly. To write the obvious thing, the clumsy thing, the thing I was embarrassed to admit I was thinking. The first draft is not for anyone else. It is for you. I now keep a rule for first drafts: no editing during. I write forward, always forward, and I do not look back until the session is over. If I write something I know is wrong, I write [FIX THIS] and keep going. The editor comes later. The writer comes first. The first draft is not the book. It is the conversation you have to have before you can write the book. Be honest, and everything that comes after gets easier.