Remember to check out the other contributing writers tips on beginning the revision process! (Click the banner above.)

I’m excited about this week and next as we discuss our methods of revision.  I have some tricks that help me during the process that I’m excited to share.

The method you use for your revision I believe, is going to be as unique as your writing.  We are all going to do it differently but I think there are a few key things that we must all work on during revision.

1. Continuity- plot and character

2. Pacing – I know during the first draft that I usually hit the middle and then speed to the ending without developing my 3rd act as well as I should

3. Spelling, typos, formatting

4. Word usage- we all have our pet words.  If you don’t know what they are yet, you will after your first ‘reading’.  I’ve learned that you should never repeat a unique word in your manuscript… you must continue to find new words to describe whatever it is.

5. Language/Voice – For me this is the toughest part, for some it’s the easiest.  I still push myself to continue to learn how to use language to create the world and the tone of my story.

We’ll cover these in greater detail next week.

The first thing I do after I’ve typed The End to my first draft is let it sit for a minimum of 2 weeks… Don’t even look at it.  Don’t even think about it.  You need this time to create a distance between you and your creative work.  You are also switching gears.  You are now going to become The Editor instead of The Writer.

Personally I have always hated switching gears but I believe that’s because I find Revision the most challenging process for me.  I know the more I do it the better I’ll get and the less I’ll resist the process.

There are a few things I do enjoy about it already.

After 2 weeks have passed an you’re ready to review your manuscript you’ll need to prepare for the work ahead.

Office materials that I use:

• Postit notes, both 3″ and 2″ squares AND the little 2″ tab-like sticky note.
• 3.5″ Three ring binder.  The bigger the better.
• Single subject spiral bound notebook (3-hole punched with perf’ed edges)
• Bic medium ball point in RED and Black and Purple
• Highlighters in Green, Blue, Yellow, Pink especially if you use Margie Lawson’s Deep EDITS system ( more on this later)
• #64 Postal size rubber bands (to band up each draft as you complete it, also useful for submissions)
• Lots of printer paper.  My first MG novel would use about 1/2 ream each time I printed it.
• Laser printer- more cost effective than inkjet in the long run.

The very first thing you’re going to do is reformat your manuscript.  I reformat mine in a way I learned from other writers at Romancedivas.com.  And it works wonderfully for me. It not only makes it easy to read, but easy to revise.

In Word do the following to your manuscript in this order

1. Change the Page Layout to Landscape
2. Select all and change the font to a serifed font (like Times Roman or my fave Georgia).  Serifed fonts are easier to read.
3. Change your margin size to: Top: 0.5″; Bottom: 0.5″; Left: 0.5″; Right: 5.5″ or greater.  This pushes your right margin in toward the middle, giving you a large amount of white space to use for notes and additional sentences or scenes.
4. Double space the entire document
5. Insert Page Number – ALWAYS REMEMBER THIS!!!

Once you’ve printed out your manuscript you’ll need a good industrial strength 3-hole punch.  Punch the pages as they come off the printer and place them in your binder.

Grab a Black pen and the notebook, you are now ready to read. The first pass, of many, through your manuscript.  How Exciting!!!

We’ll discuss how to do the first read through as well as cover the list I mentioned above in next week’s post!

Please visit our other contributing writers in the series by clicking the banner!

Last week we discussed Perseverance.  Sticking to it.  This week we’ll talk about Motivation.

What motivates you to persevere?  What keeps you writing.  As a writer we need to find what motivates our characters all the time.  Without proper motivation the actions of our characters are discordant.

As writers ourselves we need to find our motivation because this is a tough gig and we need to go back to our core motivation from time to time and justify why we do what we do.

What motivates you to write?  Why do you write?

My motivation for writing is to leave something behind that is uniquely mine.  To teach and inspire others.  To challenge myself to learn a difficult craft.

How do I stay motivated?  That’s the toughest to answer because some days motivation is hard to come by and it’s antonym discouragement takes its place.

I recently began reading The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.  It analyses the lives of the highly successful.  And it’s fascinating.  In the book he discusses the rule of 10,000 hours (Chapter 2).  If one spends 10,000 hours working to be more proficient at something then they become a virtuoso at that complex task.  World class violinists, computer programmers, writers.  Once you put in your 10,000 hours you’re made, if it’s quality time and you focus on advancing your understanding and knowledge of the craft of writing.  Well, I’m willing to give it a go.  Put in my 10,000 hours, see if I can become a great writer.

It’s all in the math. So how much is 10,000 hours?  Right now I work about 3 hours a day reading and writing to actively advance my craft.  I wish it were more but I don’t live in a vacuum.  10000/3=3333.33 days. Um, okay that’s about 9 years.

NINE YEARS!  Well, okay at least now I know.  And I’ve already put in about 1 or 2 of those years. So I have roughly 7 more years of work.

Now 10k hours isn’t mere proficiency at the craft, its mastery.  So at some point in the next 7 years I’m going become proficient enough to write and sell a book.  And if I continue to work hard, I’ll write and sell more books.   But I’ve got to put in my time.

The fact that it’s only 7 years motivates me.  Seven years is not a lifetime.  But I could flounder for a lifetime if I don’t pay attention and I definitely do not want that.  How about you?  Do you think 10,000 hours is worth it?

Next week: Revision!

Click the banner to read how other writers work to get to THE END!

So you’ve started you new Work In Progress. You’ve pounded out some words.  You’ve got a couple pages or maybe tens of pages under your belt.  Maybe even tens of thousands of words.  But now the honeymoon of starting the new WIP has waned.  Now what?

1. Keep Writing. Daily.

2. Focus on Positive Perseverance- Reward yourself in small ways for every page you write.

3. Take a timed short break (from an hour to a couple days, but give yourself a deadline to get back to work)

4. Get back to work!

5. Millions of people have started a novel, few finish… be the few

6. Find strategies to keep yourself working

Strategies that work for me when I get stuck or bored or both with my writing.

First and foremost, keep writing.  Sure you can take a creative break, but make it short, enough to recharge, and get back to writing every day.  Writing everyday is the only way to get through to the last page of your novel.  If you’re able to sit down every day and write even a few words, it’s like climbing a mountain, each step, even small ones will get you to the top.

If your story is stuck and you don’t know what to do about it, introduce a new character, just throw him/her into the mix…  don’t worry about issues that come up just add them… see what happens.  You can always take them out in revision.  Was it Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett that said, throw a guy in there with a gun.  Well, that would work for crime dramas and even comedies, but for Middle Grade, not so much.  But you get the point.

Interview your characters, ask them what is going on and why your story is stuck, or why the middle is dragging.

Take a note card and pen to bed with you. Write out the question “What do I need to do to move this story forward?” and put the card under your pillow.  Now sleep on it.  When you wake up, immediately ask yourself the question again.

Do you have an answer?  Even if it’s crazy write it down on the note card.  If you hear silence and just need coffee, save the card for tonight and try again.  This has worked for me on more than one occasion and I come back to it again and again.  It works for me.

Skip the middle. If you’re at the middle of your story and it’s boring you… Skip it.  Seriously.  Skip the middle.  Write the end of your story. Not only will this make you feel better but it will give you a place to start when you write The End.  Now go back and see if you can piece together events that fit in that space you left.

Words of wisdom.  As tempting as it might be, and man is it tempting. Do NOT start another WIP if you haven’t finished the first one. Sure you can write out some ideas to save for later, but don’t sabotage yourself by stopping and starting.  Learn to slog through those tough days and learn to work out your problems before jumping to something shiny and new.  You’ll get to The End.  And you’ll not only be glad you’ll be very proud of yourself and how often do you get that?

See you next week in the continuing series on How I Write.  We’ll be discussing how to stay motivated!

Don’t forget to check out our contributors by clicking on this banner and reading how they start their new WIPs!

I’m sorry I’m late posting this week. I’ll probably be late responding to comments too. I’m on vacation in Central PA and I have limited access to a computer.

I also decided to take a vacation from working on my WIP this week too. Sometimes you need a little break so you can come back with fresh eyes.

But the blog must go on!

So the discussion this week is how we start a new work in progress.

Prior weeks we discussed how to get the ideas, how to plot and how to research to make sure we’re on the right track. This week it’s how to do the actual writing.

I have to say the best motto for writing the first draft I take from Nike, JUST DO IT. You really have to set aside your misgivings and fears and just do it. Get that first draft written. Most, if not all writers will tell you the real writing comes during revision.

I personally love the first draft phase though. I love the wondrous discovery of the beginning.

I start as you know by outlining using Christopher Vogler’s book The Writer’s Journey.

But during the initial writing phase I use a different word processor designed by a programmer/writer, called yWriter

Ywriter allows the writer to write out of sequence and for me this is the most important aspect of the application. I realized I was one of those zany writers who cannot write in a straight line. I do have to plot but then my first thoughts go to those high moments in the story. Sometimes I even write the ending first! Granted all of these scenes are subject to change as the story progresses and as I revise but as my creative brain works I need to write out those big scenes first. Ywriter lets me do this easily.

The next step is to set a schedule for myself. I have 2 little kids so I have to be flexible. But I do try to stick to the rule of writing everyday while I’m drafting. You need to do it everyday to keep your brain thinking about your story. Taking a break during the drafting process causes more delay than you want, trying to get your mind back up to speed drives me crazy.

My favorite way to draft the first one is to do something called Fast Draft. A term coined by Candace Havens who started a yahoo group to give back to other writers. I can credit her solely will getting me over that first big hurdle when it came to actually sitting down and doing the work. Fast Draft forces you to committ to write 20 pages a day or about 5000 words a day.

As a writer I now understand that 2500 words is a high number for daily writing, 5000 is insane. But there’s a wonderful catch to it.

You only write this way for 2 week. 14 days. Your order out, you get a sitter, you create 2 weeks of writing heaven/hell. But you commit to it.

The first 3 days of it are rough, you don’t know your story very well, writing 20 pages is physically and mentally draining. But by day 4 you’ve immersed your brain, you’re thinking about your story 24/7 and you have breakthroughs, you have flashes of brilliance and you get into the flow. It’s enlightening. It’s creativity at its best. And you’re pushing out the page count in record time.

At 20 pages a day you can’t even begin to worry about editing, and you must learn to push through or work through ‘stuck’ points and move on. It’s quite liberating. I highly recommend it. It’s only 2 weeks, and you’ll have 50k words when you’re done.

This is how I start my new works in progress. I hope this gives you some ideas on what might work best for you! Happy Writing!