You wrote a shitty first draft. Congrats!

Then you walked away. AWESOME!

Now... now what? What do we do?

You've still got the kitchen sink, and it's all swirly-whirly and NOT CLEAR. How do we get a little closer to CLEAR??

Here's what you do:

You've written a "shitty first draft" of your presentation.

Congratulations! That's huge.

But now what?

Tune in for Part Two of this three part series to figure out how to jump-start your talk with content that resonates, engages and is authentically grounded in your story. 

How do you write the best (worst) first draft of your presentation?

Along with being a theater major in college, I was also an English major. I loved loved loved being on stage (I know), but I also loved to write. Little did I know I was basically creating for myself the building blocks of my life now. All I knew then was that I loved them both and didn’t want to choose. (Funny how I rejected the idea of being a communications major. Nope, didn’t want that.)

Anyway - I remember sitting in what was infamously known as being a really difficult writing class with Sister Mara. (It was a small liberal arts catholic college.) Sister Mara was a really tough grader - but a brilliant mentor and guide. The assignment was to come up with a metaphor for the process of writing…

You guys - I LOVE METAPHORS! They are the best... so meaty, and you can create and assign so much meaning in them… and to me, that’s the best kind of meaning to find… in layers of other things, because it helps us FEEL those ideas more? - ya know?

Anyway - I remember sitting there and thinking that my metaphor for writing was a make-out session. (So very senior year in college of me to say!)

But essentially what I was thinking was that writing is exploratory for me…

Now, as a grown-up I might say something more like writing is like a walk I took through the Redwoods in Northern California several years ago in this beautiful, sort of mystical place… exploratory, searching, I don’t know where I’ll end up, but I really enjoy the experience of finding out (hahah a- which is really funny if you apply those same ideas to my make-out sessions.( Ahhahaha. Ahem)

ANYWAY.

Some of those same elements apply to us as we create our talks.

We want to go on the journey. We might have an IDEA of where we’re going. We’re not sure how we’re going to get there. And so… we face down the possibility of a draft of... something.

Here are five tips to diving in and writing the best WORST first draft of your talk that you can: