It lists some of the most popular books and how long it took the writer to finish them.
“But nothing good can come from my sloppy first draft if I write it in a few weeks,” says the nebulous reader voice in my head that’s starting to sound whiny. “Pour your heart and soul into the rough draft with reckless abandon.”– Michelle Rene Pour your heart and soul into the rough draft with reckless abandon. Taking years to write that first draft can land you in complacency town before you cross the finish line. You don’t want to be sitting in a rocking chair with your first draft complaining about how much he snores before you even get to edit. Leave the nitty-gritty for your fifteenth edited draft. The point is the first draft should be all elation and honeymoon. “Writing a book is like starting a new relationship.” Michelle Rene In the beginning, it’s like a honeymoon! You feel all the emotions.
Writing a book is like having a relationship. This is because you are in the beginning of a book affair. How excited are you when you first start fleshing out a story? How amazing does it feel to start naming your characters and setting up their scenes in your mind? Fan-freaking-tastic! Strangely, there is a raw emotion that comes from writing something so fast you don’t have time to noodle it to death. That first draft is possible if you pick yourself up by your metaphorical bootstraps and do the work every day, but a large percentage of writers never cross the finish line. “Will I ever finish this book?” the writer asks, (fists raised to the sky for dramatic effect). A malaise sets in, often slowing a writer down to a crawl while they chip away over a long time and often give up entirely. Nothing kills a book faster than never finishing that initial draft. Isn’t it counterintuitive that the chapters written in a whirlwind of typing be the best? I’m glad you asked, nebulous reader voice in my head. I wrote the lion’s share of that book in six days, and those chapters were by far the best in the book. I went away to a writer’s retreat and forced myself to write as much as I could every day. It wasn’t until I decided I really needed to finish my novel, I Once Knew Vincent, that I decided to shove my face in the cold, scary, deep end of the writing ocean. A first draft took me over a year to complete. I would write a chapter, go back and edit it, and then proceed to the next one. I used to be just like you because I was led to believe novels should take years to write. Most of them are exercises I’ve stolen from other writers. I’m not magical I’m a binge writer, and none of the ideas in this article are uniquely mine. But if you really want to knock that rough draft out of the park, I’m going to ask you to kick that notion to the curb. Many people find this the best way for them to consistently write draft after draft. Sounds like a line you’ve heard before, right? Yeah, me too. I’m telling you that you can do this, too. Though I am intensely proud of this accomplishment, I’m not telling you this to brag. My experimental novella, Tattoo, was written in about three weeks. I wrote the first draft of my award-winning historical novel, Hour Glass, in sixteen days.
Tips for writing a rough draft how to#
Chanticleer Awards Deadlines and Announcement Projections.Chanticleer Non-Fiction Book Awards for Instruction & Insight.
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