Writing Your Book – Step 6 – Creating a Rough Draft

The next step in writing your book is one of the most fun. You have your first 350 words written, you have a working outline, and you have begun to fill in the details of that outline. The next step will encompass the largest chunk of time because it is the actual writing!

You may be holding back, thinking, “I’m not ready.” But the truth is YOU ARE READY TO WRITE THIS BOOK! You’ve done your homework, and all you have to do is keep writing, one chunk of text at a time.

Writing is easy if you take it in steps…just as you have been since we began.

Think back to the day that you wrote those first 10 sentences….Now that you can see the outline of the entire book, aren’t you proud of how far you’ve come? Your next step will be multiple steps, taken in any order you wish.

Choose one element from your outline….it can be the ending, the middle, any one scene, or description. Write a rough draft of that section or element. Remember, don’t obsess about making it perfect, just get the ideas down on paper or in a computer file. Once you have that section written, label it, save it, file it, and select another section. Continue in this fashion until you’ve filled in the text for every section in your outline. Some sections will be one or two paragraphs long….others may be several pages…but work in the order that seems logical to you.

Some writers will begin at the beginning and write toward the end of the story. Others will select major components of the story line and then fill in details around them, creating connection lines and paragraphs from one section to another. Whatever works for you is great…there’s no wrong way to write a book!

Once this is done we’ll begin to talk about rewrites, editing, and looking for the right publisher for your book!

I will be around, but busy celebrating family at a reunion this week. Continue to write and we will compare progress reports in just a few days. I will still be able to read your comments, so please continue to write to me and to others through this site. God’s blessings on you all.

Janet Sikes Anderson