Welcome to the Book Writing World courses! Or welcome back. This first week is Orientation Week and Community Building. If you’re just starting at the Book Writing World, you’ll be discovering how to set up your goals’ widget, navigate the online conference calls, update your status and participate in the conversation, post assignments and generally get connected to the Book Writing World.
But even if you are an old hand at all the technical steps, there will always be new people to meet and opportunities to practice introducing yourself and your work. Make some friends. Build and strengthen your writing community. The most valuable resource we have to offer is the other writers here. Take advantage of it! One way or another, people—characters, writers, stories of people—probably brought you to writing. And it is the people who will sustain you.
So . . . your assignments for this week are to get familiar with the learning environment, watch the technical videos, explore the forums and functions of the site. If you are returning, use this time to refresh your memory on any aspects of the Book Writing World that are not yet second nature to you. Review orientation materials, technical videos and forums. Everybody, ask questions.
And . . . reach out to some writers and introduce yourself. Post or update your bio in your profile. Post or update your photograph on the site. Keep things current. This is your world, the place where you are going to plan, write, revise, finish, sell and promote your book.
Some Notes on Getting Started Drafting
“The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.” — Blaise Pascal
With the help of your writing brain, you’ve gathered and organized your notes, built your structure. Now you have to put words onto the page, which requires a different aspect of your writing-self: the storyteller.
The storyteller is intuitive, imaginative, inventive. It can be hard to break away from the controlled force of the brain, the important adult life planning and business that we work hard to juggle and manage every day, and give way, instead, to the vivid, dreamy play of the storyteller. Resistance can be strong. The desire to clean your house, check your email, get in touch with an old friend from years ago, will arise as you prepare to sit down and begin.
Ignore the dictates of distraction. Ignore the panic, the fear, the strong voice of the critic that tells you you are not ready or that the work cannot be done or done well.
Begin. More than where, how or with what you begin, the key is to put words on the page, to move into storyteller thinking, which involves trying things on the page.
The athlete concept is useful here, too—you are moving when you put one word in front of the next—and movement is all. You are learning, exploring, and creating questions for the storyteller to answer.
Don’t worry about whether what you write will be part of the final product. The first draft is a path toward the later forms of the book, not a creation of its core.
That said, you’ve done your planning, and so you can begin at the beginning: look at the “status quo” of your Aristotle’s incline, the first problem in your problem-solution list, the first notecard or notecards in your index card pile or your computer screen. Use these as a framework, being willing to see what might surprise you, to make unexpected connections and strange discoveries.
Call this your discovery draft. More than anything else, you are building a habit here, a habit of daily writing. Out of that, any number of wonderful books can grow.
Where to Start the Drafting Course:
1) Set up your goal widget.
2)Publicly declare your big goal and your weekly goal on the goals forum.
3) Report as often as supports your success–weekly or even daily!
4) And be sure to introduce yourself, your project and your goal to the Drafting group.
Happy Writing!