So, I’ve been writing a lot lately. Okay, well, not so much JUST lately, but always. And one of my crit. Partners has always wondered how I was able to get all that done and take care of my family. So, today, I’m going to divulge my secret.
And that secret is…there is no secret. LOL. If you’ve watched KUNG FU PANDA, you’ll understand what I mean.
Okay, seriously now, the biggest thing I learned is to be able to shut down to everything else and WRITE!!! If it takes me 30 minutes of my hour to shut down to write, then I’ve wasted half my time. However, if I’m able to shut everything down instantly, then I’ve not wasted any of my writing time.
And I take the time for my writing. I try to sit down for at least an hour a day, 5 days a week.
However, just as important as the ability to shut things down, is the realization that it’s okay to write crap. Every one does. That’s the reason for first drafts. Put down your editing pen and cap. Just write. Get that story out of you and onto paper. You can fix it later. It doesn’t matter if everything you wrote that day is cut. You wrote. And it’s just that many more words until you’re finished and while you may not keep those words, it will help you decided what you want for your story.
Like Edison didn’t invent a light bulb his first try, you’re not going to get the perfect story in the first try.
I tend to write much too lean. I always have a bare-boned first draft, filled with passive voice, hanging participles and entirely too much dialogue with no physicality.
So the second draft I end up adding more to it. But then I usually overdue it. My third and fourth drafts are adding and deleting and fixing scenes so they makes sense and doing in-line edits. Eventually by my sixth draft or so, it’s probably fit for human consumption and I send it off to my betas.
Then the cycle starts all over again.
So my question to you is, what do you do to get that story out of you and onto paper?
