If you’re ready to swap pre-writing for actual draft writing, it’s good to have some strategies for facing the tasks ahead.
5. Don’t sweat the whole book at once.
As I mentioned in part one, some writers have trouble knowing where to start; some get out of the gate fast and then get stuck. The answer to both things is the same: don’t be wed to the idea that you must always write the book in order. Though I often do write sequentially, I realized long ago that trying to imagine the whole book can at times be a hindrance.
If I have a great scene in mind, I should write that scene, no matter where it falls. If I don’t know the perfect opening, then I should write a decent middle. An entire book can feel like an enormous burden, but if I focus on a chapter or even a single scene, I lighten my own mental load. I can go back and fill in missing material when I need.
Considering that there are going to be multiple drafts — and if there are not, are you really a writer? — there’s no good reason to feel like you must always write in order. For sure, if writing only forward suits you best, embrace that knowledge; but don’t stay wed to that practice if it stops you cold.
6. Don’t be afraid of the ugly draft
Whether you write forward or hopscotch around, free yourself up from worries about perfection in your first draft. Your goal is to get the story out there. Write fast, write furiously, and write messy. Try not to sit and exhaustively tinker with every line, polishing it like a gemstone, before moving on. As far as the momentum of your idea can take you, follow it. There will be redundancies and continuity errors and inconsistencies — it happens in every book. For now, keep writing and know that addressing those issues will be part of your revision.
7. Depart from the plan
You will often make discoveries along the way, realizing something you hadn’t understood about your character or suddenly being inspired to chase down a new avenue of thought. Welcome these moments and run with them.
If you have a story map, take it apart and reconfigure it based on the discoveries you have made. I swapped out the narrator in one book, killed off characters in another, and changed where in the timeline a third book began; once, a book with five interlocking stories became a book with only four. In all cases, these changes (one of which cost me 130 pages of text) yielded a better final product. Know that none of your original writing time is wasted; even material you cut contributes to your sense of what the book is and can be.
8. Read it twice
Once you have finished your draft, put the damn thing away. There is no point in trying to read it immediately; page blindness, the inability to see what you have with any clarity, is the natural yield of spending so much time on the text. Let it sit long enough to see it with fresh eyes — I like to give myself two weeks, which feels like torture.
When you’re ready to revisit the draft, change the medium if possible: print it out in hard copy or switch to a Kindle or Nook, anything to make it feel more like reading and less like editing. Read the entire book in order and, as much as is possible, resist the urge to edit as you go. You can scrawl major notes in the margin or in a document outside the text, but don’t proofread or play with word choice yet; you want to replicate the momentum of being a reader. This will allow you to actually feel how the draft lands as a book.
After you’ve done that, then go back and take on the draft from within your document. As you go, note questions the draft raises, plot holes you need to fill in, inconsistences, dropped threads, and bits that need to be cut. You might also highlight the things you like best and feel must be preserved.
9. Revise generously
Start by revising from the margins; address all the questions and concrete notes you have given yourself. If solving those issues means losing passages or even chapters that you love or, on the flip side, if it requires adding new material, so be it. Be generous to yourself and your book by trusting that making cuts and adding can be equally rewarding.
Once the big notes are accomplished, start revisiting the text from the top to look at word choice, consistency of voice, and flow of idea. Run spell-check and grammar check again — you’d be surprised at what you’ll find. Don’t wait: fix these issues now.
10. Repeat steps 8 and 9.
I know it sounds daunting, but when you have completed your first content-and-style revision, you will do yourself a huge favor by repeating the rest/ read/revise cycle one more time. It’s likely to go measurably faster this round because of the work you’ve already put in.
At this point, you shouild have a draft that was intentional in its creation, well-examined, and pretty clean. It’s finally time for an agent.
Read part one here: Before You Begin
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Previously published on Medium
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