RSSGet the Words Out
Feb 02
A Writer's Blog Authors, Writers, Writing Comments Off
Here is an obvious truth: you cannot be a published author unless you have written a book.
It’s easy to get caught up in the dream of publishing, appearances on Oprah, book tours and fans catching you in the street for an autograph, but you have to have a finished product first. Before you do anything else, you have to bang out a first draft.
It sounds pretty straightforward. But unless you’re independently wealthy or already writing for a living, making the time to write, much less finish, a book can be as much work as the writing itself.
One way to make time is to make writing habitual. That means developing a routine at the same time every day, writing for as little as a half hour or for as long as you have. Another way is reward yourself for meeting certain page goals. Write fifty pages and take a break to go to the movies. Some people find their time is better structured within a program like National Novel Writing Month (otherwise known as NaNoWriMo, see their website for the details www.nanowrimo.org).
But for most of us, none of these arrangement works 100%. So if your system isn’t getting it done, and your book isn’t getting finished, here are a few ideas to keep you progressing towards your goal of a completed first draft.
Write forwards, not backwards
Writing forwards means that you spend more time writing new material than you do fine tuning what you have already written. This is the core of how NaNoWriMo works. You have 30 days to write a novel, just keep going. It works for your first draft because you know there will be plenty of time to edit when you’re done.
The downside to writing at frenetic pace of NaNoWriMo is that your writing towards the end of the month tends to suffer disproportionately compared to earlier chapters. But the point is to get a completed draft finished first and foremost.
Take Notes on the Toilet
I don’t mean this literally. What I mean is that you should keep a notepad and pen handy at all times to jot down ideas, plot points and character development. Inspiration is unpredictable, you have to be ready to document it when it hits.
But when you sit down to actually write, that is not the time to be taking and arranging notes. Unless you’re an extremely organized writer, stopping to jot notes is just going to be a distraction. A better plan is to take all your notes since the last writing session and go through them just before you write. Read them over, possibly rearrange them into a particular order. Then set them aside and write. You can always pick them back up later if you need to.
Don’t Give Google All Your Time
If you write on a computer, there might be a temptation to google information for your book while you write, or look up synonyms on Encarta’s thesaurus, or just surf the web for a minute to distract yourself. I don’t recommend it. Any book worth publishing will go through a lengthy editing process and that is when you should look at word choice more carefully and check facts. For a first draft, there will be factual inconsistencies, missing words, bad grammar and poor syntax. This is one time when it’s all welcome.
If you need a distraction or a break, I recommend physically getting up and going for a walk outside. Don’t surf the web and don’t turn on the TV until you are totally done for the day.
Throughout the writing process, from first draft to final draft, I have one more recommendation. Read. A lot. Make time to read books by authors within your genre and especially books in other categories. Reading is a vital component to being a writer. It will strength your resolve to finish the first draft and join the ranks of published authors.
