Many professors and writers I spoke with on this subject, and their numbers are too great to list here, all recommend the same thing: Write a draft, correct it, consider correcting it again, turn it in.

Did you see those action items in the middle? Write a draft first. Know that it is a draft, feel that it is a draft.

Be the draft.

Draft means the work is not finished, it is not ready for turn in. It is crummy. A draft is fine piece of writing that is not ready for its close up. A draft gives you job security; you now have something to correct, review and read out loud.

Some writers want their product to be perfect the first time out. We get impatient, even with our own thoughts, certainly with our creative process. Getting it right takes so much time! The best advice, is to get comfortable with writing drafts, bad drafts, crappy drafts and you’ll discover how your writing will actually improve. Why? Because when you give yourself permission to write a really crappy first draft, you simultaneously discard perfectionism and brain cramping and give yourself permission to explore and improve.

When you consider everything else involved with dragging a manuscript to the publishing finish line, the draft is the best part. Drafts are fun, divergent, exciting, pointless and filled with authentic writing. Enjoy the process of bringing a novel, report or idea to life. This is the fun of writing, as you suspected, everything else is revision, not so much fun.

All papers for school, business, grants, even the family holiday newsletter should, at the very least, have two versions. (If you want to succeed in business without really trying, review emails at least once before sending.) A paper should have three phases of evolution, draft, corrected, final.

That draft? It will be the most fun you’ll have.

About the Guest Author: Catharine Bramkamp holds two degrees in English, published hundreds of newspaper and magazines articles, a handful of novels and two essays in the Chicken Soup for the Soul anthologies. She is an adjunct professor of writing for two colleges and is a successful writing coach. Visit her at www.YourBookStartsHere.com.

Meryl’s Young’un and the Sloppy Copy Experience

Meryl here. This article is perfect timing for my almost seven-year-old son. His school has a PTA-run program called “Bronco Press.” It gives children the chance to write and illustrate a story. I asked him if he wanted to do it. He did and wanted to get right to work. So he dictates his story while I type it. Here’s the first part:

I am a bird. I am black, white and a little tan in the middle. I can fly real high. I can swoop with my tail. And I can fly down and go up really fast like whooooooosh! I can fly really fast and slow, too.

My landings are real good. I can peck really good.

He says he can’t think of anything else. So I tell him to tell me a story involving this bird he described. Take the bird on an adventure. He continues:

Then one day when I went flying I crashed into a jungle because I saw a lion. I didn’t get hurt. The lion was coming towards me and said, “Roar.” He wanted to make friends with me. Then we heard a big roar from a tiger that scared them.

I tried to whoosh by to get the tiger confused. Then the tiger was about to eat me. But lion came by and pushed me out of the way. The lion saved me. Lion pushed away the tiger and we never saw the tiger again.

Again, he tells me he’s done with the story. I explain to him that it’s a good first draft. (I found out from his teacher they call it “Sloppy copy” — I love that!) And we will review it again another day. He wants to be done, finished, wash his hands of it. (My older son does this, too — works on a project for five minutes and declares finito.)

I asked him, “You know I’m a writer?”

He nods.

“Remember what I taught your class (career day)? That we need to brainstorm and keep editing our stories. The first one is never the final story.” I said.

The stubborn little guy pushes back. We’ll see if I can get him to revise it. But hey, he’s only in first grade. Still, they teach them to do a draft before a final at this age. Next time we discuss the story, I’ll remind him that this is a “sloppy copy.” I just hope he doesn’t take offense to that or think I expect perfection (of course not!).

Don’t you think writing is rewriting? How do you handle the first draft? What happens after the first draft?

Sad to hear Fort Worth’s Mayfest is off this weekend thanks to swine flu. Attendees enjoy arts, entertainment and crafts. It also hit many of us with allergy and asthma attacks with all the hay (it almost always rained before or during Mayfest).

• How not to be hated in Facebook
• 10 people to unfollow in Twitter
• 10 techniques for an effective ‘call to action’
• Is PR really in the relationship business?
• 10 reasons to be grateful for difficulty
• Letter from a Proofreader with Edits
• The difference between male and female leaders: I always find these types of conversations fascinating.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• John Williams is the man! A Star Wars-themed four-part a cappella musical tribute. Performed by Corey Vidal and Moosebutter. Closed-captioned,too!
• Swinefighter: Swine flu fighting game. Need a break from all the swine flu bad news? Here you go.
• 17 cool magnet tricks
• Spreadtweet: “So, you work at a big corporate, huh? And you’re not allowed to use Twitter… Wouldn’t it be awesome if there were a Twitter tool that looked just like Excel?”

You’ve arrived at stop #19 of the The Writer Mama Two-Year Anniversary Blog Tour Giveaway! I’m honored to be a train stop on this virtual tour. A little background, Christina Katz — aka The Writer Mama — decided to celebrate the two-year anniversary of the book by eTraveling to a different blog every single day of March. So this spot here is part 19 (Darn! I missed my favorite number by one). To read the other parts of the blog tour, find the shortcuts at The Writer Mama Riffs blog.

And there’s more! You have a chance to win a copy of Writer Mama: How to Raise a Writing Career Alongside Your Kids! Remember to check at the end of this post for the 411 on how to win a signed copy of Writer Mama! I’ll announce the winner tomorrow.

I never wanted to own my business. I never considered becoming a writer until it happened. After all, you hear so many folks saying they want to write. I never thought I had any talent or anything special. My writer mama story started with the arrival of my second child. I enrolled in New York University’s online program in Internet Technologies with plans to go for a career in web design.

Got the certificate, did a few web design projects and hated it. No eye for design. No patience for fixing complicated bugs that worked right in one browser and not the next. No enjoyment.

Before all this, I had subscribed to email newsletters on web design. After discovering my dislike of doing the design work, I continued to stay on top of web design. The field of making web sites still fascinated me. One of the newsletters would give away a full-blown copy of Photoshop (!!!) if it published your article. That sparked my writing career. I wrote a few more articles for the same publication, which led to my first paid gig.

Babies. Talent. Segue to Christina’s entry. Thank you for stopping by. Come again, y’all!

Post #19: Writing is Rewriting

There is no such thing as talent. I’ve learned this from observing my own successes as well as my peers and my students. When Anne Lamott wrote the popular writing book, Bird by Bird, I bet writers around the globe breathed a collective sigh of relief. Surely if Anne Lamott writes “shitty first drafts” then there is hope for all of us, right?

And that is why you might nail a chapter in your book on the first try… or the tenth. Or you might be on the verge of wanting to pull your tongue out before the darn introduction comes together. You might simply be unhappy with the guts of a chapter or two because they don’t quite accomplish what you are trying to say. Or maybe you feel that your book draft is somehow incomplete but you’re not quite sure how.

When a piece of writing works, I always think back to something one of my students said once: it’s like a song. Every single word is just right. There’s a harmony in the words that just works. And that’s a great feeling, generally brought about by many rewrites rather than talent.

In book writing, we are striving for that same feeling of completion, of wholeness, of near perfection that is like a song. But saying this and getting there are two different things entirely. And each of us has to decide to get there and then do it however we can. Let’s take a look at the three rewriting phases that typically follow the book drafting process:

Rewrite your brains out: Until you turn in that first full draft, you can rewrite your book as much as you want, whenever and wherever you want. If the book hasn’t been approved as an entirety, by all means, keep rewriting to make it as good as it can get. But be careful not to become so obsessed with rewriting that you don’t make it through your full first draft. Remember Anne Lamott and just bang that “shitty first draft” out.

Approved with suggested rewrites, additions or cuts: Once your editor has gone over the full draft of your book, she will likely request changes ranging anywhere from simple to major. Suffice it to say that most editors would rather make small changes at this stage rather than major changes, but it’s not unusual for an editor to ask for an additional chapter or two, the restructuring of a certain section, or even a cutting of a chapter or two. Trust your editor. She very likely knows what she’s talking about and has the reader in mind.

The copyediting stage: Perhaps the most loathed and appreciated person you will ever encounter is your copy editor. You may initially dislike her with some gusto in the short run and then appreciate her a lot more in retrospect. Luckily for writers, a thoughtful copy editor knows that a little bit of appreciation for all of your hard work can go a long way even as she nitpicks your grammar to death. And even an ungenerous soul with an eye for excellent usage can bump your book to publication-quality from wherever it was. I say, go ahead and let a copyeditor feel superior (if that’s how you think she feels—she might, then again, she might not). And, since you will likely never have to encounter your copy editor face-to-face, since they are typically hired out as freelancers, you don’t ever have to worry that you will have the opportunity to tell them what you really think of them after you’ve just reviewed an especially “bloody” red-line of your hard-wrought efforts.

The galley stage: You’d think after all of these editorial reviews your book would be on the brink of divinity, right? Sadly, no. The layout folks likely accidentally deleted a few sentences here or there. And if there are tables or graphs, you’d better finger-read every word and make sure all your logic is parallel or whatever it’s supposed to be. There are plenty of typos in your book and this is your last chance, before publication, to find them. Sticky notes come in handy at this stage. You may as well purchase them in bulk, just in case.

Today’s Book Drawing: To enter to win a signed, numbered copy of Writer Mama, answer the following question in this blog’s comments:

Describe your typical rewriting process. Do you usually nail it on the first try or do you have to progress through multiple rewrites?

Thanks for participating! Only US residents, or folks with a US mailing address can participate in the drawing. Please only enter once per day.

Where will the drawing be tomorrow? Visit http://thewritermama.wordpress.com/ to continue reading the rest of the Writer Mama story throughout March 2009!

• Stay out of the Recession with Email Marketing
• A New Game! What happens when self-published books skip the editing process. [Link: Lori Cates]
• 70 Million Definitions of “Blog” and Counting: I love an intelligent discussion and this is one.
• Friday Word Fun: Why do we drive on a parkway and …
• Where to Find Quality Web Templates and Blog Themes

And for fun because we’re allowed:

• 89 useless facts [Link: Ritu B Pant]
• 10 real-life superheroes
• Caller complaints: Fight back against telemarketers
• RadioTime: Listen to radio… local, international, and internet. Site relaunched with a new design. Disclaimer: I’m one of the guilty parties behind the site changes. The content, of course. Free service. The only thing that costs anything is RedButton, which is TiVO for radio. You can try it for 14 days.

Remember to join the birthday celebration! Lots of prizes and easy to enter.

• Five Words You Can Cut: Blogged about this in the past… cut modifiers such as “really, very, much” is a good start. I use “just,” but more to add “conversation” to writing. If it’s an article or something formal, I omit it. [Link: John]
• 35 Essential Elements for a Newsworthy Release: 35 is a bit much. Useful info.
• Landing Page Tutorials and Case Studies. One resource should do the trick for your landing pages wanna knows.
• Polish Your Writing to Professionalism: Three tips to self-editing. My number one tip is to use an editor… but that’s not always possible, so these three will do.
• 5 Business Decisions You Will Be Proud Of: “Does doing all of these things guarantee anything? The answer: YES.”

And the fun stuff because you’re allowed.

• ABC book in 3D. For a moment, I wished I had this book when my kids were younger. But then I realized… they’d tear it up. This one looks too fabulous to ruin.
• Jewish Bread Toilet Seat Cover: In honor of Passover, which starts this weekend.
• 10 annoyingly brilliant office interiors: No depressing gray found here.
• The 10 Most Underrated Consoles

Don’t you hate it when you revisit content that you wrote a day or over a week ago and you find problems? If I had the luxury, I’d sit on most things for more than a day.

For short turn-around assignments, I write the first draft quickly and smooth it. Then I sit on it for at least an hour, if possible before doing the final read through. Every bit helps.

The nice thing about sitting on something is that more ideas come to me while doing something else. For game reviews, I often have a short turnaround time. Sometimes, I have to take a break from playing the game and writing the review because something else comes up.

Many times, a creative comment or idea pops up while I’m away from the computer and the game. So I use my smartphone to capture the thoughts before they get away.

However, I don’t apply the “sit on it” rule for blogging unless it’s a post for later.

So don’t feel guilty about taking a break. You’re still working by letting your brain rest or brainstorm during the rest period. That’s enough break for me, back to writing.

I love editing… other people’s work. You know how many of us don’t like to look at pictures with ourselves in them? That’s how I feel about editing my work. After all the research and rewriting of sentences, I can’t see my writing with fresh eyes anymore. Occasionally, I’ll read an article I wrote months later and see a few easy fixes. Even if I had read the article the day after I wrote it — I wouldn’t have caught those fixes.

But I make an effort to self-edit using similar steps covered in Editing Made Easy. The article focuses on manuscripts, but most of the tips work well for articles. But when I edit my work, it feels like I’m doing it with one eye as the rest of me cringes reading my own work.

Two don’t-miss steps when self-editing:

* Sit on the article for at least one night (writing the article in the morning and editing at night doesn’t count — must sleep at least once and naps don’t count either).

* Read it aloud in my head. I don’t know if it’s a deaf thing or not, but I hear words in my head almost as if they’re being said out loud. My head does a better job than my voice anyway. When I reach a spot that sounds bad, then I say it out loud.

I do have moments when I stop self-deprecating and look an article with fresh eyes (when it’s published). Occasionally, I’ll respond thinking “Whoa. I wrote that?” (in a positive way). It’s easy to forget why you stay in business as a writer when writing something every day and on a regular basis. Your own words sound monotonic (did I use that correctly?) and unimpressive, but then you are surprised when reading an article you wrote over a month ago and seeing that there’s a reason why people hire you, and you feel better about being a writer.

I’m also lucky to have a family willing to be a second pair of eyes.

Digital Web is looking for an editorial assistant. Here’s the description:

As our editorial assistant, you’ll help maintain our schedule, keep tabs on authors, and assist us as we prepare each article for publication — performing many of the mundane, yet essential, behind-the-scenes tasks at one of the web standards community’s most important and widely-read magazines. You will be part of an all-volunteer team and must have a flexible schedule and a sense of humor. You must also be reliable, an excellent communicator, and obsessed with getting the details right. You’ll also need AIM or ichat, as well as Skype. Knowledge of Textile and Basecamp is a plus — or just learn it on the job.

I was a volunteer at Digital Web Magazine for over a year and it was a great experience because you get the opportunity to work with some of the most talented people in the web design industry and one of the premier magazines in web design. I also help behind-the-scenes on occasion. Basecamp is a breeze to use and Textile is simple text markup.

How many times have you written an email only to find an error as soon as you hit Send? When writing an email to a friend or family, most of us rarely do a second read to check our work because we take a relaxed approach with such emails. An article to a magazine, a book chapter, or a short story, however, requires formal editing.

“But isn’t that the editor’s job?”

The authors say, “Yes and no.” They explain the editor’s purpose is to polish the work and not rewrite your work. The writer looks good in the editor’s eyes when turning in an “almost finished product.” Not only do you make the editor’s work easier when rechecking your product, but also it earns you a better reputation.

Writers aren’t the only ones who benefit from Write It Right. The College Board’s National Commission on Writing conducted a study that concluded a third of employees in America’s blue-chip companies wrote poorly and businesses were spending up to $3.1 billion per year on remedial training (2004). Newspapers like the New York Times published the statistics from the report to show the gravity of the situation in the U.S.

The five chapters in the book make up the five steps for self-editing. Each chapter ends with “Questions for Self-Reflection” to help readers determine what areas need working on, so they focus on those while self-editing. The first chapter ends with a grammar quiz, which is the book’s paradox. It has two errors. One question misses a word that appears in the answer and another has a typo.

While following the five step process feels lengthy, the authors include advice on what to do when in a hurry. Writers can judge how much to review their work and adjust the process as needed.

The basic advice consists mostly of common sense, the things we learned in school or through experience. However, the book shows how to find your weak areas and work with them. The authors do an impressive job covering all the bases in this small book by tackling the editing process, giving a handful of grammar tips, and providing checklists. It takes less than an hour to read straight through without completing the suggested activities.

This little guide has a good chance of coming in handy rather than sitting on a bookshelf never to see the light of day. The easy-to-scan format, checklist templates, short list of rules, and examples increase the probability of the reader using it.

Biblio:
The National Commission on Writing (2004) Writing: A Ticket to Work… Or a Ticket Out [Internet] New York, College Board. Available from: <http://www.writingcommission.org/prod_downloads/writingcom/writing-ticket-to-work.pdf> Accessed 14 June 2005

Title: Write It Right
Author: Dawn Josephson and Laura Hidden
Publisher: Cameo Publications
ISBN: 0974496626
Date: September 2005
Format: Paperback
Pages: 144
Cover Price: USD: $17.95 Amazon: $12.21