Where are you going with all this writing? Well, you are mostly likely shooting for a minimum of 50,000 words. Why 50,000? It is the minimum word count for a book with a spine that can sit on a shelf in a bookstore.
ASK YOURSELF
What do you want to write? Get clear! Is it a book or something else?
It could be a:
Full-length book: 70,000-80,000 words
Novella 30,000 words
E-book: 10,000-50,000 words
E-course
An essay: 1,500 words
A blog: 300 words
A speech: 2,000-4,000 words
A TED talk: 4,000 words
An article: 1,500 words
A personal essay: 3,000 words
An academic paper
A letter
A journal
A record for yourself or family
We are going to ask you to track your progress using word counts, not pages or chapters.
A chapter is anywhere from 1,500 words and upwards. This depends on how many chapters you want. There can be between 12-80 chapters in your book. This is your choice.
Do the maths! If your book is going to be 80,000 words and you have 10 chapters you will need 8,000 words a chapter, right? That’s a lot of information per chapter and perhaps too much.
You may want to increase to 12-15 chapters and reduce your word count to 5,000 per chapter.
Or would the information work better if your book had 38 chapters, each of around 2,000 words?
What is a first draft? Well, it is simply the very first version of it. And many authors will tell you that’s the hard part. Getting your story out of your head and onto paper without self-editing too much is the challenge most writers face. But until you have a first version written down, you have nothing to work with. The story is still in your head, and yours alone. You have nothing to make better, smarter, tighter or more readable.
Does this mean you will have finished your book by the end of this process and it is ready to find a publisher? Not a chance. Most writers end up re-writing around five versions, iterations or drafts of any book before they send it to publishers. This first draft is often called a ‘shitty first draft’ because the truth is that most first versions of any writing project are just a rough assembly. You are most often never going to show THAT version to anyone. You are going to take it by the scruff of its neck, and do a second (better) draft. Sarah’s rules of writing are the keys to getting it done. The first draft is what matters at this point!
You could even hand it over and allow an editor to make it better.
As a book editor I work on a lot of author’s books to make them better. Sometimes they are great to begin with, and all I can do is just make them a bit tighter or clearer. Other times I can see that the author (or their publisher) has sent me their first version. Most often I will send that version back with a few pages of notes and a request for them to rewrite it one more time! Any agent or publisher can see a first version a mile off. I have made that mistake myself, getting so excited that I had finished my first novel that I wasted no time. I printed out some copies and posted (yes, posted, as I’m talking about the days before you submitted online) it off to the biggest publishers in the business. Needless to say, the rejection letters came just as fast.
So, in the first stage of writing we are working to get your first draft out. This is the first step all writers must walk on the journey to publication.
Look Ahead! These are the longer steps
Step 1: Get clear on your genre, story and tackle all the planning (ten days max)
Step 2: Bash out your first draft (anywhere from 90 days to a year)
Step 3: Take a bit of a break (a month minimum). You can start building your Author Brand at this stage.
Step 4: Start shifting into the publishing phase. Read through, then rewrite your second (better) draft (two weeks).
Step 5: Craft your book one last time (your 3rd, 4th or 7th draft!)
Step 6: Prepare all the documents, you need to submit a book to a publisher (take a month).
Step 7: Send it out to at least 20 publishers.
Step 8: Wait for up to a year, and keep sending while you wait.
Writing a book is not a passing fancy. It is a Big Thing. If it’s just a whim, well then you may quit after about 20,000 words when you realise what it really takes. It takes tenacity, perseverance and staying power. If you have picked up this book, you are writing more than just a series of blog posts. You are in for the long haul – the delight of a first draft!
Writing a book is a calling and if you hear the calling you will walk the entire path to the end. Don’t give up on any of these steps.
The danger? You get into a loop of perfecting your first few chapters for years and never get beyond those.
The solution? To trust us, and the process you are following in this book. You dive in, put your judgments aside and keep writing until you reach your WORD GOAL.
WRITING TASK
Get clear! In a nutshell, what is your book about? Imagine this is what will appear on the back cover of your book. It will tell a reader what to expect and what the content of the actual book is.
Take a look at your bookshelf to inspire you and to see how other writers do this
This should be 3-5 sentences - This needs to be what you will say when someone asks you … what’s your book about?
Write a few versions and see which works be
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