Tuesday, June 28, 2016

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.

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