How many Drafts to Write a Book?
How many drafts does it take to write a novel? How many do you take?
I guess it depends on you, the writer. However, it should take more than one. I know with the rise of the indie author, one thing that gives fast publishing a bad name, is writers who write one draft, edit it, and then put it out into the world.
Years and years and years ago. I am talking before we had even Facebook, let alone Amazon for publishing, I read a book called Writing Down the Bones. It was a revelation.
I think every new writer gets lost in that thought that you can spit out the first draft of a book, fix a couple of typos, add a dash of a comma here, sprinkle in the odd semi-colon and you’re good to go. I spend a lot of time writing, deleting, re-writing, deleting again and starting again. Printing off, staring, hair pulling … It was a nightmare. I couldn’t understand how people put books out so fast. Maybe it was just me. What business did I have doing trying to get my work out?
Craft Books
Then I read Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg, and she said, first you write down the bones. Literally, just write the story. Don’t care about the structure, typos and all that stuff. Just write it. You can add the meat later. I couldn’t believe it. I could write whatever I wanted and fix it later?
