How guest blogger Aleksandra Zaric created a book.
The only way to complete your book is to “just write.” Consistently write on a daily basis, with goals in place. I would set my alarm at 4.00 am and go straight to my computer to write for a couple of hours. Whenever a thought would pop into my mind during the day, I would immediately write it down to include it in my book later on. If you don’t do that, you’ll forget it.
I set myself a goal to complete the manuscript by a certain date, no matter what. Despite becoming constantly sleep deprived, I found this was my only way to stay consistently motivated. It doesn’t matter how poorly written the first draft is; you can always polish and edit at a later stage. Geez, the amount of time I read and re-read the book and tweaked it here and there…hundreds of times until I couldn’t stand it anymore.
Once that stage is done, get a manuscript appraisal – a professional to critique your work. For me, this was well worth the investment of $400-$500 for a 60,000 word manuscript. Still, I was nowhere near finished. I used the appraisal to improve my work even further, a process that took longer than writing the original draft. I then got another manuscript appraisal which was much better. Finally, I submitted it to an editor who helped me fix it even more.
Check out this author at her website.
Before I got my writing degree, I would still correct my work as I went, but now it is worse.
ReplyDeleteI turn in what I think is my final draft to three editors that usually ask me to give them a job. That's why I pay them, but I can not help but want to make it as good as possible for anyone else to read even if it was my daughter or son or neighbor.