Drafting Guest Post

For today’s blog, I have a guest poster here to discuss drafting! Woo! Angi is an amazing person who tweets some really great tips for other writers as well as some pretty funny stuff! I had the pleasure of reading her story mentioned below before it was out and trust me, you’ll love it! If you enjoy NA romance, this book is totally for you! I am thrilled to have her stop by today. So without further adieu, here’s what she wrote for you guys:

First, let me introduce myself. I’m Angi Black, or you might know my alter ego Irene Rose and I just put out a book CHARCOAL AND HOT CHOCOLATE. It’s New Adult and I’m pretty much in love with it.

College life is a  breath of fresh air for 20 year old Ellie Baylor, a painfully shy but  beautiful art major. She has her canvas and charcoal and that’s more  than enough. Her choice to go to school far from home and the watchful  eye of her strict parents seems like the perfect thing for smooth  sailing into an easy life. But when River Daniels,  a charming artist  with eyes the color of hot chocolate, asks her to join him in a project  for class, Ellie may get more than just an A. She might find out how to  live.

I’m already working on my next book LEARNING CURVE and it’ll be out sometime in November.

But today I’m going to talk about getting rid of drama and excuses and how to get in those words. I’m a fast writer and lots of people want to know my secret. I’m sad to tell you, there isn’t one. I’m very lucky in that I rarely seem to be out of words, but as far as fast drafting goes, those two things aren’t always the same. So in honor of JunoWriMo this month, Camp Nano next month and the ever daunting/impressive NanoWriMo, here’s some thoughts on the fast draft.

So here are my basic guidelines and hopefully some of them will work for you.

1. No editing! In order to fast draft, you have to put a certain amount of trust in yourself. This can be really hard for writers, I know. But go with it. Let the scene take shape and don’t worry about fixing it, or if it’s crap or gold. Just write and move on.

2. No rereading! Allow yourself a few previous lines to see where you left off, and then get into it. If you keep going back to the first chapter, it’s going to be pretty freaking awesome, but it’ll be an awesome first chapter of an unfinished manuscript and that won’t do you any good. Get it written. Get it done. Then you can fix it.

3. Set goals! Can’t do 50K in a month? Who cares! It doesn’t mean you’re a failure. It means you’re busy. If you can write 100 words a day, then make that your goal and do it. The best key to drafting – stop comparing yourself to others. I see this a lot when I lead #WriteClub on Fridays. Someone will get a crazy count and someone else gets 117 and they feel bad. Hey, that’s 117 more than you had and writing is art and sometimes it takes time to put your soul on paper.

4. Make your writing a priority! Let me tell you a story. A couple days ago, I really wanted some tea. It seemed a simple thing to go to the kitchen and make a pitcher of tea. But I was busy. I had work, and writing, and cleaning, and laundry and all these things. And they all took priority over something that mattered to me, something so simple. I texted my husband and said, “Tell me you want some tea.” He said he did. I went and made tea.

I found it acceptable to fit someone else’s needs into my schedule but not my own. And that was over a pitcher of tea! Ridiculous!

Now, think how silly it is that you don’t make time for your words when that’s way more important than your choice of beverage. And man, that tea is delicious.

5. Just write! Stop worrying about how it’s going to be when it’s done. Stop worrying about if it’s commercial, who will rep it, who will read it, this, that, this, that, just write it. Think the words. Transfer to paper. Ta-dah!

**My fast drafting usually includes large amounts of snackage and only slightly smaller amounts of wine. Season to taste. And then add a dash more salt.

I hope this helps. I know maybe those sound simple and obvious, but most times as writers, we put so much pressure on ourselves, we forget why we’re doing it in the first place – we have a story to tell. So just relax, maybe make some tea, and tell your story. Before you’ll have a story and then you can edit and revise and embrace those neurotic writer tendencies, but that’s another post.

You can find Angi at the following locations:

@anginicole722

@authorrosebud
blog 

blog 2

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