Every writer has one cringeworthy first attempt at storytelling. Mine started on a weirdly formatted document and died in a folder that I called “drafts”.

But that chapter was the start of everything.

Here’s why.

Trash Bin Confession

When I started writing, I thought it was a complete masterpiece.

ACOTAR sparked the flame. Reading about mystical worlds and a woman destined for more ignited my inspiration. Excited, I sat in my living room with my laptop battery burning my legs as I typed the first chapter of an enemies-to-lovers novel about vampires and vampire hunters. It had mystery, and danger, and a sexy man in all black.

It was a disaster.

But…instead of trashing the entire thing (I seriously considered it about ten hundred times), I used it to shape the rest of my writing future.

Who I Was When I Wrote It

At the time, I wasn’t thinking about plot arcs, voice or pacing. I had a story that I wanted to tell and the characters were as real to me as my friends and family. Daydreams and the excitement at finishing the story fuelled my writing. The idea that I was finally writing a story I had thought about for ages made it impossible for me to think of anything else. I spent days writing from sunrise to sunset.

Every attempt to write was filled with passion, ideas, and absolutely no planning. Because of course there wasn’t planning. I was a newbie author (I didn’t even call myself an author) enjoy the action of typing for hours on end. Planning never came up.

The person who wrote her first chapter believed she could write a book without understanding the craft.

She was wrong.

But she was brave, and I love her for continuing.

What the Chapter Was About (And What Went Wrong)

The first line of my trashed chapter was:

“Don’t push against the drift Ari, you’ll crash the damn car you idiot. You’re gonna crash runt.” 

It was a random line that popped into my head, and it opened the scene of the main character’s relationship with her brother. There’s more that’s drawn out from it, but overall the chapter was messy, repetitive and doesn’t really hit home.

The chapter was also overly descriptive, (seriously I was getting to Tolkien levels with the way I described the wall texture and complicated scent patterns in the room), and had a lot of dialogue that was easily confused and unnecessary.

It was also insanely long! I fixed it in editing, of course, but rereading the chapter clarified I needed to pace myself.

The first chapter of a book is supposed to grab a reader, but looking back on what I wrote, it would have put readers to sleep.

Why I Threw The Chapter Away (And What I Learned)

I didn’t completely trash the chapter. I turned it into a prologue (after some harsh words from my best friend) and cut out a lot of wordy paragraphs.

It was a hard pill to swallow, and I felt embarrassed, but I learned two things from my first chapter:

1. Writing is rewriting
2. Bad pages are better than blank ones
3. Not every word is needed

How That Chapter Helped Me Grow

Writing my first chapter, turned prologue, taught me to ask myself these questions:

1. Why didn’t it work?
2. What do readers actually need to care about?
3. How can I make the world I’m writing feel real?

Asking my best friends for their thoughts was helpful because they were open and honest with me. They helped me answer these questions by telling me what they felt after reading it and what they thought the story was about. It changed my entire perspective and helped shape the next parts of my story.

No one will ever see my original first chapter (expect for my two best friends), but I owe that messy first draft everything.

Advice for New Writers and Their ‘Trash Chapter’ Moments

Have you written something you hate? Good.

Don’t be afraid to delete and rewrite it. If you’re like me, you probably have the track changes feature active on your manuscript so you can look back on your past writing. If you don’t, do it. It’s amazing to see where you started and where you end up.

Here are a few extra tidbits to think about:

• Every draft has value.
• Perfection is the enemy of progress.
• Writing well takes time.

So keep writing and keep trashing or changing chapters. Just don’t give up on the dream.

Share Your Trash

Have you ever written something and wanted to immediately delete it? I’d love to hear about your first writing attempt.

Share it in the comments.

And remember: no one starts off great. But you can start off brave.