Two Ways of Writing a Book

For some people, writing a book is the easiest thing in the world. Armed with nothing but a pen and a few sheets of blank paper, they sit down and manage to effortlessly write fiction that is so good it barely needs revising. And then there is the rest of us.

For most people, writing a book is more of a struggle. I am not talking about the planning or revising here but that tricky bit in the middle - turning sheet after sheet of virgin paper into a first draft.

The problem is actually a double-edged one...

• First, there is the difficulty of producing any words in the first place. You sit down to write a novel, full of hope, and one hour later find yourself staring out the window having written nothing.

• Second, having finally managed to get into the zone and write a few pages of a chapter, there is the problem of reading it back the next day and positively hating it!

I don't want to talk about the first issue here. If you ever find yourself failing to produce a single word when you sit down to write (and you will almost certainly experience this when writing), the article on beating writer's block should help.

This article addresses the second issue, that of first drafts rarely turning out to be half as good as you imagined they were when you wrote them - and how dispiriting this can be.

What you have to remember, though, is this...

Writing a Book Isn't Meant to be Child's Play

Writing fiction is a challenge (if it weren't, everyone would be a writer). If you accept it as a challenge - one you will overcome, of course! - then the experience of feeling disappointed that your first drafts don't read like Hemingway becomes something you simply accept.

Writing the first draft of a novel is really about getting black on white. The dialogue might be stilted and the prose might be so clunky it rattles, but no matter - you now have something to work on, some words to revise and make pretty.

Nevertheless, if you can barely bring yourself to even read your first drafts, much less show them to anyone else, that nagging feeling of "maybe I suck at this novel writing stuff" persists.

So what I want to offer you here - and I'm now getting to the main point of the article - is a practical method of dealing with first-draft disappointment when writing a book...