Tips for completing your first draft: Part 1
Your story deserves to be told, and you can only do this by showing up. Here are some tips to put your best foot forward before beginning any writing project. | This is a 5-minute read.
Hello and Salaam my friends 👋🏾
I pray you’re well and having a great start to the new year. This year I have a couple of writing goals, but top of my list is experimenting with different times to figure out which works for me best to create. I’m really big on making writing a habit, and when I struggle to find time, I want to be intentional with creating time. I’m contemplating having a baseline word count to start with, but I’m yet to decide.
In the past, I’ve used and returned to 750 words, to help me with building the habit, particularly when I find that my brain keeps forgetting that a first draft is a draft, which means it can be messy, all over the place, lacking in structure etc., since I’ll end up editing it anyway.
I’ve been toying with the idea of revisiting an old project, and I think one of my stumbling blocks comes from having rewritten the book twice already. It’s in pretty good shape and whenever I attempt a rewrite, I find that I struggle early on because I keep referring to the nice, polished old draft.
So my first step to overcome this is starting from scratch. I want to re-figure out what the story I want to tell is, why this story is important to me, and the best way to tell the story. Basically, I’ll be treating this as the first draft of a brand new story.
As it’s the start of the year, I know some of you may also be working on first drafts of your own, so I wanted to share my approach to tackling a first draft.
Equipping myself to put my best foot forward
You can watch the video version of this on my TikTok
The majority of my writing problems stem from mental blocks – from negative talk to lack of motivation to simply being unable to get writing. So before I get writing, I reflect on previous struggles I’ve faced in my writing as well as try to anticipate any future struggles which may come up, then I:
Set SMART goals. SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound. Think about what you’re trying to achieve, what set up would help you achieve your best, and ensure the goals you set are based on your life context (taking into account your capacity, energy and resources)
For example, with my new project, my goal could be completing the first draft of my novel, of approximately 80,000 words, by the end of March 2024. I plan to do this by carving out 1 hour each weekday, and 3-4 hours on the weekends, to write. I will track my writing using Todoist. Completing the first draft would bring me closer to having a polished draft that I can send to my agent by the middle of the year.
With my goal, I only focus on what is within my control.
Write a mission/vision statement. This helps me take myself and my goal seriously and remember how important it is to me. I’ll usually begin with my intention, and then make a commitment to myself to show up, with God as my witness. I also include all of the ways I plan to show up, the potential obstacles I may face and how I intend to address them such as writers block, lack of motivation, the difficulty of the middle of a draft, negative talk etc.
For example, I may have a line which says, ‘If I find myself struggling to show up to the page, I’ll revisit my goals and intention to remind myself of why I set out to work on this project. And if this doesn’t work, I’ll reach out to a few trusted friends, who can help me recenter myself.’
This serves as a sort of toolkit for me to tackle any issue which may arise throughout the writing process.
Tell a close friend or a mentor. I’m very big on accountability, so when I have a goal which matters to me, I share it with a friend and tell them exactly how I would like to be held accountable. This could be a monthly or bi-weekly check-in to ensure I’m honouring my writing time. I find these accountability calls to also be very useful for identifying problems which may be stopping me from achieving my goals, and figuring out ways to tackle them. This way I’m not stuck in a rut of not writing, and then beating myself up for not writing.
Outline, outline, outline! Even if you consider yourself a pantser, I still recommend having a sort of outline. It saves a lot of time in the long run. An outline does not have to be set in stone, but it helps give you direction so that you are not always held back by the blank page. And it can look like different things such as, figuring out your beginning, middle and end, making a list of important scenes to take place, or even plotting out your character’s journey.
The most important to bear in mind is, these are all steps that work for me. You can try them out, experiment and see what works best for you, so that you can begin creating your own routine. If writing is a long-term career for you, you’ll always find yourself facing a new writing project, and having a system in place takes a big chunk of the load off your shoulder.
In next month’s craft post, I’ll be sharing everything I do when it comes to planning, prepping and outlining my novel.
Do you have a writing routine that always works for you? How do you begin your writing projects?
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Till next time,
Suad x