Getting to The End - That First Draft

WRITING WEDNESDAY

Wow!  What happened to Monday and Tuesday?  LIFE

One of the easiest things about writing is the ability to give up.  I've done it.  Everyone has done it.  But what does giving up get you?  Not a whole lot.

This time--THIS TIME--and every time after, giving up will not be accepted.  Why?  Because you can do it!  With a little help and some tips and tricks, you, too can finish that book!

What does it take to write that first draft?  Writing it!

Whether you're a panster or a plotter, the writing must happen.  We all obsess about our every word.  Why?  Because we want our writing to be perfect.  But nothing and no one are perfect.  Still, we strive to do our best.

One of the biggest things most successful writers will tell you is to Just Write.  Sounds simple, doesn't it?  It isn't, but we can make it easier.

Many successful writers will say that the key is to write a fast first draft.  I agree with that.  But what, exactly, does that mean?  It means No Editing.  That's right.  You don't write a few pages, then go back to pick it apart and polish it to what will probably be changed later.

If panic sets in at the mere mention of No Editing, take a deep breath.  There are ways to make that first draft with no editing easier.

1. Have a fairly solid idea of where your story is going.  Does this mean you have to plot the entire story?  Not necessarily.  It depends on what works best for you.  Simply put, have an idea of your opening, an inciting incident that shows the conflict of the two characters (hero and heroine in a romance), the mid-point aka main turning point, the black moment (when all seems lost), and the resolution aka the happily ever after in a romance.  Cooking Up a Story
2. Know your characters' GMCs.  If you don't know what GMC (Goal, Motivation, Conflict), you can do a search on the Internet.  There's an abundance of information out there to help you.  A quick explanation is Goal (what the character wants), Motivation (why the character wants the goal), and Conflict (what's keeping the character from reaching his/her goal).  Each main character should have his or her own GMC.  Check out my blog on Building Characters and blogs and articles by others.
3. Do as much research as you can pre-writing.  Whether contemporary, historical, or even futuristic/dystopian/other, they all take some research.  You want to write a cowboy book, a doctor book, or even a setting you're unfamiliar with?  Research.  Again, the Internet is a wonderful tool for this and many other things.  Use it.  Talk to people who can help.  You'll find more than you need, but that's okay.  What you don't need you may need with another book.
4. Plan and use your writing schedule.  Set aside time to write every day and also set a daily goal for pages or words to be written.  And stick to it!  Check out my 4-part blog series on Goal Setting for some ideas.
5. Think about what you're going to write before your fingers touch the keyboard.  In whose POV will the scene be?  What is going to happen in a scene? If it helps, instead of writing one scene and stopping for the day, stop in the middle of a scene--especially an exciting or tense point--and start there the next day.  Once you're in the scene, writing it, let the moment and the characters carry you along.
6. If you find yourself stuck...  Don't panic.  It's amazing what our subconscious does for us.  Try sleeping on the problem.  Brainstorm with a writer friend or group of writer friends.  We often get too close to our story and characters that we can't think "out of the box" or beyond our preconceived ideas.  If those things don't produce results, write whatever comes to mind. Don't worry that it isn't quite right, just get down the idea.  But don't edit now!  Remember, we're on the No Editing plan.  Write a note (sticky notes work well), along with the page # and chapter/scene if needed, and refer to it later, after the first draft is finished. Or highlight that section and go back when you've finished the first draft.
7. Write it down!  Ideas come to us at the strangest times.  Have a notebook where you can write them down.  Put a notebook in your car, your purse, or wherever you can grab it.  While driving, DO NOT write notes.  This is where a small voice recorder can really come in handy!

Once you have that first draft written, it's time to put it away.  Let it sit for a while, if possible, and work on something new or whatever it takes to get you away from the story.  Once you've had some distance, go back and start editing.  That's the time to refer to those notes and make changes.

Celebrate!

Now that your first draft is finished, feel proud of your accomplishment.  Many people want and hope to write a book, but a large percentage of those people never do.  You have!

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Final Friday

Have you set your goals for 2013?

It's Final Friday, the last Friday of 2012.  There are only four days left of this year to begin, work on, and finish the list of goals we'll be working toward next year.  This time next week, we'll be four days into the new year.

It's goal setting time!

It's hard to stay productive without knowing where and how you're going.  That's how goals help us.  My local writing group has been working on a goal all year.  Actually, we've each had our own word goal which is part of the overall word goal of the entire group.  We'll be talking about a new word count challenge at our January meeting and how we can make it more successful than this one.  We've all learned something this year about goals and writing, so next year can be even better.  The following are a few of those things I learned over the past few years when setting and trying to reach goals.

• Murphy's Law of Goals: When working on a goal, especially a year-long one, life will always intrude.  Try to build in extra time when setting your goal.  If it's early in the goal and you discover you're behind, there's still time to make up for lost ground.  Write an extra page or the equivalent word count of a page each day or twice a week.  Your odds for catching up are fairly good.  If it's later in your goal, just keep working and don't worry about the deficit.  Any progress, no matter how small, is PROGRESS.
• Never give up because you've fallen behind.  Dumping a goal is the worst thing you can do.  Giving up gets you nowhere, and you'll always wish you'd kept going.  Recognize why you're not staying on goal and try to correct it, if possible.  If not, keep going.  Sometimes miracles DO happen!
• Don't expect perfection.  Write first, polish later.  It's easy to write a few pages, then spend days, even weeks, going back over and fixing this little thing and that little thing, never making real progress. It's true that we can polish the shine out of anything we work to death.  Never surrender.  Write now.  Fix later.  Remember, you can't fix a blank page, except by putting words on it.
• Have a road map of where you're going.  Whether your goal is two pages a day or ten, having an idea of where your story is going and who your characters are will make the writing much easier.  This doesn't mean you have to have a complex plot, complete with twenty page synopsis.  It simply means that you need to have a solid idea of who the story is about, what's going to happen to him/her/them, and how the conflicts will be resolved.  Plan ahead.  If that means planning only a few scenes or chapters ahead, go for it.  Having an idea of what's going to happen when you sit down to write will be one step closer to getting words on paper.
• Celebrate each small goal you reach.  We all tend to be harder on ourselves than we should be.  When we don't reach a goal, we frown, grumble and brood.  When we do reach a goal, we too often don't give ourselves even something as simple as a pat on the back or a "Way to go!"  Reward yourself, even if it's nothing more than an hour reading, watching TV, napping, or spending extra time with family or friends.

What did I learn this year?  Taking a look at my stats-to-date, I see I need to make some changes.  I'm amazed that I surpassed the word count I'd set as my goal.  This past year, my word count total included both regular book writing and also blog writing.  In 2013, I plan to significantly raise my regular writing goal and keep the blog word count separate from it.  This year my word count goal will be 175,000 words.  Having learned that I can write more than I thought I could, there's no reason not to raise my goal.  

For those who set a goal for this year, but missed meeting it, don't give up.  A new year is just around the corner, and learning from our mistakes is a blessing.

We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day. - Edith Lovejoy Pierce

NaNoWriMo: When Word Count is Your Goal

WRITING WEDNESDAYS

If you haven't been paying attention for the past ten plus years, you might have missed hearing about National Novel Writing Month, better known as NaNoWriMo.  I admit that until a few years ago, I was clueless and had no idea what that "gibberish" meant.  Since then, I've become more enlightened and given quite a lot of thought to participating.  If I didn't seem to always fall in the middle of some kind of deadline, I would have jumped in last year or even the year before.  The same holds true for this year.  Unfortunately, revisions don't net 50,000 words, as a rule.  (I have managed to accrue a few thousand, though, so imagine what that means. ;) )

For anyone who thinks that writing 50,000 words in a month (NaNo runs each year from Nov. 1 through Nov. 30) is an easy task, it isn't.  Okay, back in the day when I first started writing towards the goal of being published, I could write a 50,000 word book in three weeks or less.  And some of those books written that fast weren't half bad.  They weren't always half good, either.  But let's face it.  A book written that quickly is basically nothing more than a first draft.  It takes me longer now to write that first draft.  To write a book from scratch via NaNo, I'd have to write more almost three times faster.  Oy vey!

There are tricks to writing a first draft that fast, and one of them is knowing who your characters are and where the story is going.  Trying to do it with no road map will probably net the writing a lot of rewriting in the future.  For those who enjoy rewriting and revising, this is a plus.  For Geminis like me who get easily bored with the SaMoSaMo, it's not so great, but for others who have polished and tweaked their process...WOW!

There are tricks to writing for NaNo or for any type of fast draft writing.  If word count really is your goal, but you want to have something to substantial to build on, have a plan and especially a system.  I encourage you to look around for hints and tips and the processes of others.  Then, as national bestselling author Anna DeStefano says:

"Listen to what I do, watch others, then figure out your own process and how best to improve how YOU write. So YOU can draft better and more productively and have what you need to rewrite something brilliant from those rough first words."

and check out her new blog post, How We Write: Drafting freedom.  You don't want to miss it!