#168: Your first Draft is NEVER Your Final Draft

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message. Create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

Your first draft is never, ever your final draft. Hi, my name is Shelli Hitz. I'm an author coach and owner of authoraudienceacademy.com and I just finished a two day virtual writing retreat. Now, these are intense, and I just put everything into it. Not only is it a time that we come together for writing, but I'm encouraging, I'm teaching, I'm coaching the entire time, and I really get an inside look into what authors are struggling with. And one of the things that kept coming up over and over again is that the first draft almost has to be like a final draft. And what I found is that several of the authors that were part of my retreat, it's like they wanted to write their first draft so well and go back and edit it and, you know, work at it. And it just was so detailed in that first draft, it was almost like they were making it their final draft. And so I want to share with you some thoughts that I have for really getting your book out of your head onto paper in record time. Because I really, truly believe there are many of you out there that are writers that have manuscripts in process, but because of overthinking, perfectionism, and just wanting it to be right the first time, those manuscripts have never been published. If that's true or if that's you, let me know in the comments and let me know that, yes, Shelley, that's me. I have a manuscript that I've never finished because I have either been overthinking or I want it to be so high quality and I just got stuck. So I want you to think about a few things. So when you're writing your first draft, I want you to repeat to yourself over and over again, my first draft is not my final draft. No one has to see your first draft. No one. Not even your editor. Nobody. Your first draft is for your eyes only. Even people like Stephen King, he says, your first draft is going to be horrible, but you got to get it out. You. You have to get that first draft out of your head onto paper. If you don't have your first draft, you have nothing. You just have an idea, an idea. A book idea does not impact lives. A book idea does not earn book royalties. A book idea does not bring you more business. So in order to get that idea into a published form, you have to first get that first draft. So I want you to think about that. Your first draft is not your final draft. Do not feel like it has to to be polished, edited, fully annotated. I actually recommend that you write without editing. So the process that I teach in authoraudienceacademy.com is to first write the, you know, outline, you know, brainstorm your topic outline, and then once you have your outline, then start writing. But when you're writing, don't try to be editing at the same time. So, so you're writing that first draft, you're getting it out. Now, sure, you may occasionally go back and reread a few things, but really focus on getting the content out. And then I have a process for self editing. So when you go through the process of self editing, there are four or five different options that I suggest to you in the Training in Author Audience Academy for self editing. Then you'll go through your first draft and you'll start self editing. You'll start the self editing process and it will start to become more refined. So you may pass through your first draft four times doing different forms of self editing and then only then are you going to be sending it to someone else. So that very first draft, nobody's going to see it because you're going to go through a bunch of self editing afterwards to get it to the point where you're going to either send it to proofreaders or, you know, your professional editor. Usually I just recommend sending it to a professional editor and then after that potentially have like proofreaders or beta readers. But my entire system is inside authoraudienceacademy.com we'd love to have you join us if you are not already a member. If you're a member, that system is in the publish module. So the first thing is when you're writing, just think about getting it on paper. It's a very, very first, like rough draft. No one else is going to see that it's not meant to be a final draft. So don't be really editing as you're writing. The second thing is also just don't lose the flow of writing to go and research. When you're writing your first draft, you're going to maybe think of things, I need to look up this quote or this statistic or I need to be able to add a reference for this thing, flag it. So when you're writing, you want to stay in the flow of writing and flag it either with a post it, note, a highlighter, something, flag it to research it later. What I love to do is batch tasks. This is the same concept with writing. Right now when you're writing your first draft, you're writing your first draft, you'RE NOT editing, you're not researching, you're not annotating, you're not doing anything else. Your writing.

Have a system, whatever works best for you. However, you flag that, like I need to do this research later and then in a chunk of time later, do all your research, look up all those things and batch that task. When you have the first draft complete, set aside a time to do self editing, batch that task. Because what happens is you get in the flow. It's like this. It's as if you're driving down the highway at 70 miles an hour and you stop and then you get, you know, you start going again, get up to seven 70 miles an hour, then you stop. 70 miles an hour, stop. 70 miles an hour, stop. It's hard to get anywhere when you keep changing tasks. So that represents like I'm, you know, I'm stopping, so I'm changing a task, Then I'm getting back to 70 miles an hour. I'm riding, then I'm changing a task. I'm going back to zero. Now I'm riding 70 miles, you know, and it's like your brain has to keep switching tasks. That's true. Even with your work. So if you're switching tabs all the time, your brain is always having to change gears. And it can take longer to do something than just staying with one thing, get it done, then move on to the next thing. And there's a lot of research behind this. So if you can just stay in the flow of one particular type of task, you'll be able to get it done a lot faster, typically. And then you'll be able to actually get your book done. Yay. So several people finished first drafts, rough drafts on our virtual writing retreat. They got it done. They got it out of their head onto paper. Now, I'm not saying this particular system, what I'm saying is going to work perfectly for everyone. You have to find the system that's going to work best for you. And in writingweek.com it's my free seven day writing challenge. I help you find the different types of circumstances that are going to help you write your best. Now it's going to be different for everyone. Don't try to shove a round peg into a square hole. So don't try to. I'm not trying to say that everyone is going to be exactly the same. You, you're unique. You're different, your circumstances are different. Maybe it is going to work better if you do some self editing along the way. One of the virtual writing retreat attendees said, I think that's kind of how I work best. I don't know. I don't know how you work best. But all I'm saying is why not give this a try and see how it works. Turn off that editor brain, turn off the perfectionist mindset and the overthinking and, and simply sit down and write. Get that rough draft out of your head onto paper and just get it done. The other thing that came up during the virtual writing retreat is that it's, I believe it's much easier to write when you have a detailed outline. So the more detailed your outline is, the less writer's block you're going to have because you know exactly what you're going to write about next. And so if you're having trouble just even like sitting down thinking, okay, what, what am I going to write next? Maybe you need to take a chunk of time. Remember we're talking about batching tasks and really outline your book. That means outlining your chapter titles. Outlining what's going to be included in each chapter, what's the content? What story are you going to tell? What research are you going to use to back it up? What technique are you going to teach those types of things? If you want help with that, that's something I teach in my book Writing formulas webinar. You can take that webinar for free@shellyhits.com formulas but the more detailed your outline, even if you're not an outlining type person, it really can help you. It can help guide you to what you're going to write. So maybe you don't do the entire outline in one setting, but maybe you just sit down and you outline the next chapter in more detail before you really start writing. So you get that detailed outline for that one chapter and then you know where you're gonna go, you know what you're gonna write about and you can just write. I hope that this has helped you. Did you have any aha moments? Was there anything that you really thought, I'm gonna try this or, you know, thanks for reminding me about this, Shelly. If so, just let me know in the comments or if you're listening on itunes, let me know in a review. I always love to hear from you. The reviews mean the world to me and, and I really appreciate you just sharing, commenting, and letting me know if this was helpful for you. So we finished the Virtual writing retreat. Off with a bang. And as a bonus, I have an Author Audience Academy member. She's going to be coming on as a new team member. I have a team now that's helping me serve you Inside Author Audience Academy. And she's going to start hosting many writing retreats. She's starting in July and August this summer and there'll be in the evenings and the weekends. We also have our writer's block parties every month. So if you really want to have a community and it works, it just works. Like the last two days, people got so much done. There was breakthrough after breakthrough. I don't have it in front of me, but several people said I got unstuck. I was stuck in writing my book. I got unstuck and the powers that were praying for each other. When we're writing together, there's accountability and we use the pomodoro technique, which I teach you in writingweek.com but we'd love to have you join us. We have a ton of different things that just serve you Inside Author Audience Academy to help you get your book done. We have accountability calls every week. My team member, Kim Steadman, she hosts those. Rebecca Livermore hosts the writer's block parties and Jeannie Wise is our moderator in our Facebook group and I'm available to answer questions every day. So we're, we're here for you if you need help. If you're stuck, if you just want to be amongst other Christian authors and have that community, that excitement, come join us. It's@authoraudienceacademy.com if you have tips or things that you would love to share. Also make sure to share those in the comments and I will see you next time. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Author Audience. I would like to invite you to attend one of my free trainings on three proven book writing formulas every nonfiction author needs to know. This is a fun and fast way to write a nonfiction book, but also a book that you're proud of. Plus, I will give you two free gifts just for attending. No credit card required. First, you'll get my 10 nonfiction book title templates and you'll also get my ebook titled Brilliant brainstorming. It's a 28 page ebook and both of these bonuses are yours at no charge. Just for joining us for the training, you can sign up for my free training by going to shellyhits.com formulas. That's Shellyhitz S-H E L L E Y H I T Z.com formulas this training and the two bonuses are free. And I would love to help you write your next nonfiction book.

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