Monday, July 15, 2013

Part 2 of 6 Publishing Hurdles - starting the first draft

You've decided on a story idea.  What's next?  Write the first draft.

Sounds easy, but it's harder than one thinks.  Do you outline ahead of time or do you just write it "by the seat of your pants"?  Perhaps I should have a part 1.5 or something to deal with the planning of your novel, but I can throw it all in here.

Set a goal.  A daily word count.  Start small, like 100 or 500 words.  Commit to writing this amount every single day.  If you find it difficult, plan ahead.  Outline if you have to.  But write.  Having a daily writing goal will keep you accountable to yourself.  Write this number down somewhere.  Total it up for the week.

Then, as the weeks go by, increase this amount.

Before too long, you'll have 20,000 or 50,000 words under your belt.  How long should this take?  To get 50,000 words, which is short for a novel, you need to write 500 words a day for 100 days.  A little over 3 months.  Average novel length is at least 75,000 words.  Many fantasy novels are over 150,000.  That will take you almost a year to complete the 150K mark at 500 words a day.

But completing the novel will be part 3.  Because I've run into so many people who can't even get past this hurdle.

Commit to the daily word count.  Write it down.

Good luck

Be sure to check out my ebook Guest of Honor available on the Amazon Kindle.  For you Kobo book lovers out there, Guest of Honor on Kobo is also available.  Please review it as well.  It would be greatly appreciated.

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