Writing 4 Times: A Personal Goal
Recently, I discovered this blog post from Writer’s Digest and Mike Nappa about how to write your book - ideally, four times.
The idea really resonated with me: one of my goals is to write multiple books, not just The Perfect One, and the fact it currently takes me so long has long been an issue in that regard.
(I’m probably going to need more than four coffees to achieve this though, lads).
I like structure, that’s the thing - that’s why I think I write better to deadlines. It’s why I don’t think I could ever give up my job fully, because the structure of it is as important as the work itself.
I also have lots of ideas for books. It’s a running joke with some of my writer friends that I consistently have six novels on the go at any given time, with not an ending between them.
Well, that’s no longer the case, not since I finished my draft of the novel I’ve been working on most recently. But, those other five are still languishing in Word, and I have at least one new book idea every six months so it’s a growing pile. And, these endless novels are unstructured - I suspect that’s why they’re endless.
So, of course, I’m always looking for that structure - the formula to my writing that will help me produce more of my books, ideally somewhat edited and polished enough that I’m not embarrassed to send them out to agents, or even alpha readers.
That’s why Mike Nappa’s no-nonsense approach appeals to me, I think.
The no-nonsense approach I’m talking about looks explicitly like this: according to Mike Nappa, author of a book called 77 reasons why your book was rejected, “[y]ou write a book four times.”
While writing
Just after writing the first draft
An ‘overall’ edit
After reading it out loud
(NOTE: that’s my terminology, to help me understand it - over on the Writer’s Digest blog post, Mike has his own titles of each of the four stages, and it’s worth checking out!)
I love this, in theory at least; it’s a deceptively simple idea that might just keep me on track with my writing.
I’m going to incorporate a couple of other things in my arsenal to make it work for me: the Fabula deck for planning and tracking, and a devil of a spreadsheet editing document I got from a course earlier this year.
I’ll blog my progress with the whole thing, start to finish - and we’ll see if I really am capable of writing my books 4 times.