Does writing the first draft of your book takes too long or do you find yourself losing motivation when you’re around the middle point?
If that’s you, you’re not alone. I get frustrated around the middle point of writing a book – with every book I write.
There are many tiny details I do like: interrupting writing to do more research; looking for typos and spelling mistakes; obsessing about perfecting a certain phrase; re-reading sentences and telling myself they’re not quite good enough… and it goes on and on.
If any of these details ring a bell with you, then most likely you’re struggling with the a common problem many writers deal with when they are writing their first draft…
You’re procrastinating instead of actually writing.
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Let Yourself Write
Researching details for your book, isn’t writing. Re-reading and editing for the tenth time isn’t writing. Fixing typos and spelling mistakes isn’t writing. When you’re doing all of these behaviors when you should be writing, you’re actually procrastinating.
When you are constantly fixing stuff(this is my biggest struggle), you’ve become your own worst enemy. You’re not letting yourself enjoy the writing process. You’re not letting yourself get your first draft onto paper.
And, if you don’t write, you won’t finish your book.
Tips to Help You Finish Your Book
To get the first draft written down, you have to give yourself the freedom to write.
Be compassionate with yourself. Instead of always going back to the sentences and paragraphs you’ve just written and criticizing what you’ve done, remind yourself that this is only the first draft. Think back to when you first started writing and encourage yourself with how far you’ve come.
Stop self-editing. Rather than going back to every scene or chapter you’ve just finished writing, keep writing the next chapter and the next, until you’ve finished your first draft. Don’t fret about small mistakes along the way. Fixing those happens during the rewriting and proofreading process.
Use Scrivener for writing. Seriously, this program is so easy to use. You can write in “compose mode”, so the rest of your computer screen is blacked out, and only your white document is in front of you. It’s also very simple to organize your scenes and chapters. I wrote a post on the usefulness of Scrivener here.
Do your Research ahead of time. The in-depth research that you need to do for your book, should be done before your begin. But, the truth is that many times as we’re writing, there’s a few details we’re unsure about. When you find minor details like that, highlight the phrase or put the word ‘RESEARCH’ in parentheses(RESEARCH), and then you can keep writing, knowing that you’ll come back to it later.
Write down the Skeleton of a chapter or scene. I’ve made the mistake too many times of thinking I need to have every last detail of a scene written down before I can move onto the next one. It’s not true. Your paragraph or chapter doesn’t have to be perfect or even complete. If you’re having trouble writing a certain chapter, it’s okay to just write down a few ideas of description and then move on. You can always come back to that difficult chapter later.
I hope this helps you to get your first draft finished. Honestly, I still catch myself trying to fix the minor mistakes and then I have to remind myself that rewrites will come later.
Do you catch yourself getting in your own way… to stop yourself from finishing your book? How do you motivate yourself to keep writing? I’d love to hear your story in the comments.
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