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Is It Normal to Hate Everything I've Written by Day 5?

Published

Six published writers, quoted below in their own words, on drafts they doubted, disliked or kept writing badly on purpose, and on what came next:

  • John Steinbeck, in the journal he kept while drafting The Grapes of Wrath: "I'm not a writer."
  • Neil Gaiman, three-quarters into Anansi Boys, calling his agent to abandon it
  • Kazuo Ishiguro, keeping "Awful sentences, hideous dialogue" in a four-week draft
  • Kali Wallace, who "used to give up on a story the moment it started getting hard"
  • Frances Dowell, who says she writes "the worst first drafts ever"
  • Jessica Brody, on the draft that "does not match what's in our head"

Five days at the pace in the guide to writing a novel in a month on this site ("50,000 divided by 30 is 1,667, rounded up") is around 8,300 words. That guide calls the first week "usually the easiest to write": output, not how the pages look.

The book in your head and the one on the page

Gaiman's 2007 open letter to writers partway through a November novel, reproduced by Bamboo Ridge Press, names the comparison. You stop "to compare it to the thing that you had in your head when you began—a glittering, brilliant, wonderful novel".

Against that, the draft "falls so painfully short that you're pretty sure that it would be a mercy simply to delete the whole thing." His next two lines: "Welcome to the club." And: "That's how novels get written."

Brody, author of more than twenty novels, said the same in a 2026 podcast interview: "most of us write something down, it does not match what's in our head, and we start to get more and more frustrated."

Wallace, in a Writer's Digest column published the day after her first novel came out, had believed "that if I knew what I was doing and I had a story worth telling, I would be able to write a perfect story on the first try."

Her verdict on that belief: "This is nonsense." Then: "First drafts are hard because writing is hard."

Writers who hated a draft that turned out fine

Steinbeck's journal

Steinbeck kept a diary while writing The Grapes of Wrath, published as Working Days. The entries below are quoted as The Marginalian gives them; the article does not date them.

Shortly before the first half was done, by that article's account: "Every book seems the struggle of a whole life."

A few days later: "I'm not a writer. I've been fooling myself and other people. I wish I were." The same entry ends: "I'll try to go on with work now. Just a stint every day does it. I keep forgetting."

Near the end of the novel: "This book has become a misery to me because of my inadequacy." The Marginalian notes that the book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940.

Gaiman's phone call

Three-quarters of the way through Anansi Boys, Gaiman called his agent. He "told her how stupid I felt writing something no-one would ever want to read, how thin the characters were, how pointless the plot."

She answered, "suspiciously cheerfully", in his telling: "Oh, you're at that part of the book, are you?" Then: "You do this every time you write a novel. But so do all my other clients."

"I didn't even get to feel unique in my despair." He drove back to the coffee house "and carried on writing."

Ishiguro's four weeks

In 1987, Ishiguro cleared four weeks for what he and his wife called a "Crash": writing "from 9am to 10.30pm, Monday through Saturday". The novel was The Remains of the Day.

"Awful sentences, hideous dialogue, scenes that went nowhere – I let them remain and ploughed on." He wrote without "caring about the style or if something I wrote in the afternoon contradicted something I'd established in the story that morning."

By the third day his wife "observed during my evening break that I was behaving oddly." His own reading: "the first week had been a success."

Dowell's rewritten novel

Dowell, a novelist who leads a weekly writing group, writes: "Ask anybody who sees my early drafts (especially my editor) and they'll tell you that I write the worst first drafts ever."

One first draft of her novel Chicken Boy "started out as a completely different book." Her editor asked her to make a secondary character the main one. She wrote "an entirely different novel, which turned out to be much better than the first one."

Why the early pages read this way, in their words

Brody's account of what happens next, when the draft disappoints: "We're going back to page one to revise with every new idea we have, so it starts to slow down." Then "things start to spiral out of control."

Her reason for separating the two: "essentially drafting and revising are two different jobs." Revising a draft you are still writing is "polishing in the dark, if you will."

Wallace writes that first drafts "aren't hard to finish because my ideas are bad or because I don't know the best writing tricks."

Dowell quotes the novelist Shannon Hale on what a first draft is for: "I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles."

For what a draft does not have to be yet, the guide on drafts on this site puts it this way: "a first draft only has to reach the end".

For why the pages come out rough, see the guide on this site on why a first draft is such a mess.

What each of them did next

Kept writing the next word

Gaiman: "What matters right now are the words, one after another. Find the next word. Write it down. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat."

Steinbeck, a month into the work: "I wonder whether I will ever finish this book. And of course I'll finish it." His rule, from another entry: "I must get my words down every day whether they are any good or not."

Ishiguro "kept it up for the four weeks". At the end "I had more or less the entire novel down", though "a lot more time would be required to write it all up properly."

Left a marker instead of fixing it

Brody's tip for a passage you dislike: "put things you don't like in brackets, the square brackets." Then: "Just put it in brackets and move on." Her image for it: "it's like scaffolding. It's a reminder to your brain, this isn't permanent."

Her example is a scene where her characters sat in a room talking. "I couldn't figure out what happened in that scene until I'd figured out the whole story." So: "I had to just write the bad version, move past it, and come back later."

If you keep such markers in Scrin, a note typed between double percent signs, %%like this%%, stays visible as you write, out of the word count and, by default, out of the export.

Counted the words as a gain

Dowell's first reason to be cheerful about a bad draft: "you've put words on the page! Maybe not the best words, but words nonetheless."

Wallace: "Pushing through hard spots to get a (terrible, messy) first draft written is the most important step toward eventually having a finished story worth reading."

Did not take the misery as a requirement

Wallace again: "Don't trust those who tell you that you have to be miserable and in pain in order to create something worthwhile."

Brody, on a short session: sit down with the idea of "I'm going to get all my ideas down. I'm going to just enjoy this process and live in my story for these 30 minutes".

Who says what, and where

WhoWhereOwn draft or adviceIn their words
Neil GaimanOpen letter, November 2007 (Bamboo Ridge Press)own draft, Anansi Boys; advice to the reader"Welcome to the club."
John SteinbeckWorking Days, as quoted by The Marginalian (2015)own draft, The Grapes of Wrath"I'm not a writer."
Kazuo IshiguroThe Guardian (2014)own draft, The Remains of the Day"I let them remain and ploughed on."
Kali WallaceWriter's Digest (2016)own drafts; advice"First drafts are hard because writing is hard."
Frances DowellHer own site (2019)own drafts, Chicken Boy; advice"the worst first drafts ever"
Shannon Haleas quoted by Dowellown drafts"shoveling sand into a box"
Jessica BrodyThe Creative Penn, interview (2026)own draft, a scene in a room; advice"drafting and revising are two different jobs"

Count: seven people. Five are quoted from their own letter, articles or interview; Steinbeck's journal is quoted as The Marginalian gives it; Hale's line is given as Dowell quotes it.

Questions

Is it normal to hate my first draft after a few days? The writers quoted here describe it in their own drafts. Neil Gaiman's agent told him, "You do this every time you write a novel. But so do all my other clients."

Does hating it mean the book is bad? Not in these accounts. John Steinbeck wrote "I'm not a writer" partway through The Grapes of Wrath, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940. Kali Wallace's answer: "First drafts are hard because writing is hard."

Should I go back and fix the first chapters now? Jessica Brody describes going "back to page one to revise with every new idea" as what slows a draft down. Kazuo Ishiguro let an afternoon contradict a morning and "ploughed on".

Should I drop it and start a new idea? Gaiman suggested that to his agent, three-quarters through Anansi Boys; her reply was that he does this every time. He went back to the coffee house "and carried on writing."

What do I do with the parts I hate? Brody puts them "in brackets, the square brackets" and moves on. In Scrin, a note between double percent signs stays visible as you write and out of the export by default.

How many words should I have by day 5? At 1,667 words a day, the arithmetic in the month guide on this site, five days comes to around 8,300 words. The same guide calls the first week "usually the easiest to write".

Sources