

A writer must have all the confidence in the world when writing the first draft and none whatsoever when editing subsequent drafts.ģ1. The act of writing is an act of optimism.ģ0. Every hour spent writing is an hour not spent fretting about your writing.ĭennis Palumbo, Writing from the Inside Out (affiliate link, no expense added)Ģ9. Jan Ellison, 9 Practical Tricks for Writing Your First NovelĢ8. This simple trick helped me push forward to the end. I finally made a huge poster that read: “GET TO THE END OF THE STORY” and taped it to the wall behind my computer. The rest of the story comes later with revising.Ģ7. The first draft is a skeleton….just bare bones. Just don’t walk away.”Ĭhristin Taylor, The Blank Page: Making a MessĢ5. In writing, we must unleash a mess onto the page and then reach inward and grab hold of every last thread of trust, believing without sight that: “It will be beautiful.

Before you write, sit down and close your eyes and then picture yourself writing.Ģ4. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced I’m serious and says “Okay. A word after a word after a word is power.Ģ2.
ROUGH DRAFT WRITING HOW TO
Frey, How to Write a Damn Good Novel (affiliate link, no expense added)Ģ1. Simply refuse to look at anything you have written until the last page is done. Do you really believe you aren’t capable of improving this scene if you don’t do it right now?Ģ0. Guarantee that promise with a promissory, in this case the hash symbol #.Īndy Shackcloth, How to keep writing when your inner critic screamsġ9. Scott Maiorca, Woo Your Muse by Killing Your Inner Editor.ġ8. Give yourself permission, via bargaining, to edit it later. can destroy a great idea and turn inspired writing into drudgery. Jeanne Ryan, 7 Things I’ve Learned So Farġ7. The main thing is to find a way to turn off that pesky inner editor. One of the big lessons for me was realizing that whether I took 7 months or 7 days, my first drafts would essentially have the same weaknesses and strengths so…I could quit worrying about it.Īpril Kihlstrom, How Writers Write – An interview with April Kihlstromġ6. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.ġ5. It is perfectly okay to write garbage-as long as you edit brilliantly.ġ4. Weiland, Are You Over-Thinking Your First Draft?ġ3. Turned out the very thing I thought was helping me be a good writer was holding me back. As soon as I stopped over-thinking my process, my infernal internal editor shut up, my characters started talking to me again, and my writing improved vastly. Don’t think about making art, just get it done.ġ2. If you are willing to do something that might not work, you’re closer to being an artist.ġ1. Gregory Ciotti, How to Write with Substanceġ0. Abandon the idea that your first draft should be anything but exploration.

People mistakenly expect to hit the bulls-eye on the first pass.

No one will read what you don’t give them, so the only judge in the first draft is you.Īllison Beckert, What to Expect From A First Draftĩ. In the first draft, I write for myself, and always with the door closed. The first draft is the fastest, and invariably the most important. Julia Cameron, The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life (affiliate link, no expense added)ħ. Making writing a big deal tends to make writing difficult. Most of all, I remember: the purpose of the first draft is to figure out what story you are telling.ĭarcy Pattison, Awful First Draft: It’s Hard to Trust the ProcessĦ. Lynda R Young, 5 Reasons to Shed the Genius Withinĥ. We need to give ourselves permission to fail so we have the freedom to explore, experiment and improve. Inevitably writer’s block will come knocking because we can’t meet those expectations. We begin to judge our work too early and think we need to achieve perfection. Your first draft is your imagination’s private journal.ģ. I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.Ģ. So get ready to snap your head back into writing-readiness with the advice and encouragement of authors, editors, and agents.ġ7 minutes, and you’ll be raring to write again. You need a quick, invigorating shower in the words of those who have gone before. You’ve been trying all month to just think about the story, but too much thinking and the wordcount doesn’t get met, or you just end up seeing everything that’s wrong with what you’ve already written. It’s time, right now, to stop concentrating on the past and start thinking about your story. There doesn’t have to be some grand “starting day” for words to start hitting the page, and there certainly doesn’t have to be a designated month when writing happens. Writing doesn’t need a strict timeline to happen. Or wishing NaNo was your thing in the first place? Feeling lost and haunted by wordcounts unmet?
