What’s harder than writing your first book? Writing your second.
Urgh. Seriously. You’d think writing a sequel would be so simple. You’ve already got the characters, set up the universe, worked out the plot arc. Really, what’s there left to do except put fingers to the keyboard and type?
With a deadline looming on the horizon like an oncoming storm, I tried to pin-point why I’ve been having trouble writing the book, and it occurred to me this morning that I had fallen into the common pitfall of many newbie authors of ’trying too hard to impress’. I’m trying so hard to make every sentence perfect, every paragraph amazing, that I’m not actually writing anything – I’m just obsessing over the same stuff again and again, and driving myself stir-crazy in the process.
So my awesome writer chum Tracy Buchanan gave me some very sage advice today, which I shall pass on:
‘Just get it fucking written.’
Yup. Seems so simple, but she made a very good point. The first draft is just about getting the story down. It doesn’t need to be perfect. Heck, it doesn’t even need to be that good. It just needs to be fucking written.
So she’s ordered me not to re-read anything I’ve done until I’ve finished the book and that way I won’t nit-pick and obsess over the smallest thing, which upon revision I’ll probably just delete anyway.
So there we have it. I’m now gonna follow her advice and get it done.
Thanks Trixie-Pie!
To also help spur me on, I’m unofficially doing NaNoWriMo and have taken on the 50,000 word challenge for the month of November, so follow me on Twitter for updates and see how I’m doing. I’d love your support and encouragement, so feel free to Tweet me!
So far the NaNoWriMometer is at:
400 words
Just another 49,600 to go. Eeeps!
