One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing—writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.

—Lawrence Block, WD

I’m not a big believer in setting out to write a bad first draft. We tend to live up to our expectations. Therefore, I don’t consider a bad first draft a good goal; it's not one you would want to achieve.

That said, it’s possible to have your Inner Critic get the best of you and stop you from writing at all. For this reason, you have to give yourself permission sometimes to write material you end up trashing. Give yourself permission to write badly.

It’s definitely better to get something on paper than nothing at all. If you end up cutting and slashing or simply throwing every page in the “circular file,” so be it. The sound of a file hitting the recycle bin on a computer actually feels quite good at times; it means your not attached to your writing—but at least you wrote something. That gives you something with which you can work or it provides a jumping off place for your next draft.

Also give yourself permission to write well. Aim for this goal—a good first draft. The higher your expectations, the more likely you are to meet them.