I finally picked the messy outline over the clean one, and my writer's group liked it more

Daniel Taylor · 2026-09-30T09:30:03.059765+00:00

I had two versions of chapter one sitting on my desk in Portland for about 3 weeks. One was a tidy 2 page outline with neat bullet points, the other was a coffee stained mess with arrows and a note that just said "she lies here?" I almost threw the messy one out twice. Brought both to my Tuesday writing group at the library and 4 out of 5 people wanted to hear more from the coffee stained version, mostly because the messy one had an actual voice. Curious if other folks here keep the ugly draft around on purpose or toss it once the clean one shows up.

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I finally picked the messy outline over the clean one, and my writer's group liked it more | Crappy First Drafts - Topic Shares