It’s Just You Telling Yourself the Story

One thing that sets new authors up for disappointment is expecting too much of the first draft. As a business executive, you’re accustomed to writing materials that flow fairly easily, with maybe just a little tweaking at the end. That’s because you are familiar not only with the material but also the medium—you write reports and other business documents all the time.

But a book is different. Whether it’s your first book or not, it’s off the norm for you, and it’s unrealistic to think it will just flow out of you naturally in the first iteration.

Author Terry Pratchett once said, "The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” That’s true, even if it’s your own story. This is just a matter of getting it all down as you remember it. It’s about making sure you include everything you want to include, whether it’s in the right order or not.

Once you’ve written the story for yourself, you have the bones of the book in place and you can begin to reorganise it as the story you want your readers to read. I am currently working with a client who, following this process, has discovered that not only does she have a second book in her, but several of the chapters she wrote here actually belong in that second book. She would not have discovered this had she not been open to free style writing.

Adopting this mindset is liberating, as you can simply write in a free flowing way without concern for form or even content, knowing nobody but you will see it in this form. Typos, grammar gaffes, errors in form—everything is welcome at this stage. Don’t even think about correcting them as you go—just type happily on, knowing it will all be fixed at the right time.

Some of the world’s greatest writers are known for their spare, tight writing style, and you may well want to emulate them. Just remember, though, their first drafts are unlikely to fit this description, and it probably took several iterations to get there.

One such writer is Ernest Hemingway, who was known for sentences in which every word fulfilled a purpose. But it’s also known that Hemingway laboured mightily to achieve that result.

Hemingway is also the source of one of my favourite quotes: “The first draft of anything is shit.” If that’s true of Hemingway, it’s certainly true for the rest of us mere mortals!

Go forth and write, and don’t worry about the messy first draft!

If you’d like to explore using a book coach to help you get beyond that messy first draft, or a ghostwriter to take the whole thing off your hands, drop me a line at [email protected] and let’s have a no-obligation chat about how I might help.

Happy Writing!