Tuesday Tips: First Drafts

This is easy to say but hard to do.

Give yourself permission to write a crappy first draft.

Trying to make a perfect first draft has crippled so many writers I can't even make a joke about it.

Once I gave myself permission to hammer through the first draft, all the way to the end, without going back to polish, I finally finished something.

Here is a list of things that made it easier for me:

• Forget about spell checking
• Grammar need not be perfect on the first pass
• Keep a character name list as you go
• Punctuation can be tuned later
• Never look back
• Work from an outline 
• Never look back until you are finished
• Make a list of things to do on revision

 It is a switch in your brain that will set you free. The Perfect is the enemy of the good. 

--Finish Things.