How I Edit My Manuscripts

Books are the bread and butter of my writing income.

And as you know I'm currently working on my latest romance novel.

The manuscript is written and now I'm going through the second draft.

And it got me to thinking about how many people say that second draft is first draft minus 10%. In other words, the second draft should be a tightening up of the first draft and so take out whatever is unnecessary, which they always say is about 10% of what you've written.

And I used to believe that and so my second draft was always me looking for ways to cut words out.

Yet as the years progress I find more and more that my second draft equals my first drafts PLUS 30%. (my percentage may be wrong but I definitely add to my second draft, not take from it.)

That's because I find it easier to get the first draft written rather than getting it right. That has always been a favourite saying of mine (which I made up myself), "Don't get it right, get it written."

This is because my creativity flows better and my focus is razor-sharp if I'm writing without thinking about if it's right or not. I just need to get my book written. And most of the time, I find that even in parts of it where I think I've gone wrong, I haven't. On reading it through at second draft stage, I find it's fine.

And then comes the first edit which is where I read through my manuscript and, if it's fiction, I add more bits of detail such as what people are wearing or what they're eating, or I write more about their environment or I add more dialogue to conversations.

If I'm writing  non-fiction I go deeper into explanations of how or why to do things or talk more about how things came to be. Whatever it is, I always find more to add in the second draft.

That's not to say that I don't remove unnecessary things, because I do. But I still find more to add than to subtract.

And that's not a bad thing if it helps in the flow of creativity.

So ignore what anyone says about how to edit a book. Just do whatever makes your book the best it can be.

And enjoy writing that first draft because that's always the fun part.

-------------------------------

Write Any Book in 28 Days or Less.
Laid out in an easy to follow style and suitable for writing fiction and non-fiction. Just follow the course, working just one hour a day, and in less than a month, you’ll have your manuscript written.

http://ruthiswriting.com/links/writequickly.html

Should You Write on Public Holidays?

Today is Good Friday, and I'm religious at all (not one bit), but it is a public holiday, for whatever reason.

And public holidays do come up a lot.

To the "normal" working population, these are days to not work.

But as a writer, it isn't so much a day off work, but a day to decide whether or not you should write, whether you need to write, or maybe (like many of us) you feel guilty for taking a day off from writing.

We get paid by how much we write, so the more we write the more we can earn.

So the question is, should you write on public holidays?

Well, the answer depends on many factors and I've listed 3 of them below.

1. Are you behind schedule or do you have a big workload? There are many writers who work jobs and use public holidays as extra time to get their writing done. There are also writers who use these days as 'catch-up' time. And naturally, if you're way behind with your writing, or you've taken on a lot of work, a quiet day like a public holiday, is the perfect time to really get stuck into what you need to do to lighten your load.

2. Do you have small children or other family commitments? If you have young children who are at home with you on the holidays, then it's impossible to get extra writing done, except that perhaps you can write later at night because you don't have to get up as early in the morning to get them to school. Or maybe you're obligated to spend time with other family members so your days off have to be spent doing other things.

3. Do you just want to take a day off for a change? You may have set up your writing business so that you can relax and do nothing on public holidays. Or maybe you haven't but you just want a day off without feeling guilty about all the writing you 'should' be doing. I know how that feels because I go there often. In fact, it's Good Friday and I'm writing this blog post. So there you go. But after I've finished I'm taking the rest of the day off - without guilt.

So if you're thinking about taking the day off or about writing on public holidays, it's entirely up to you whether you do it or not depending on things like your other commitments, how much writing you have to do, or whether you simply want to use it as a chill-out day, which is also fine because we all need to take some downtime now and again, and what better time than when everyone has the same day off.

It all depends on what you're currently writing and how you structure your time.

You might even want to take a big leap and make a start on writing your next book.

And why not? You've got 3 more days to spare to get it done this Easter weekend.

Just make sure you have a good one.


-----------------

Write Any Book in 28 Days or Less
Laid out in an easy to follow style and suitable for writing fiction and non-fiction. Just follow the advice as you go through the course, just one hour a day, and by the end, you’ll have your manuscript written.

http://ruthiswriting.com/links/writequickly.html

How I'm Planning to Make More Income From My Writing

Last week I took some time out to look at where I'm going with my writing this year.

I've been busily working away for weeks when I suddenly realised that I forgot where I was headed with everything.

You see, I always like to have a plan so that I know what I'm doing because if I don't stay on track, I'll get lost and forget my goals.

So one evening a couple of weeks ago, I sat down for a few hours and went through and updated my writing plans for the year.

It took longer than I thought and also took much more thinking too.

And below are 5 things that I looked at and made a few changes to make sure that I'm always working towards my writing goals and my income goals.

1. Revised my earning rate. I took a look at how much I'm earning compared to how much I want to earn this year. That helped me to look more closely at what I could do to make sure I reached my income target. One of the things was to only write for higher-paying freelance markets and not waste time on lower-paying gigs. I want to earn a minimum of $50/hour from any freelance work I do.

2. Worked on my editorial calendar. I also looked at what I've been doing so far this year and what I still needed to do as well as what I have to do to make sure I stay on track of everything I want to write and publish. If you don't have an editorial calendar, my advice would be to not only get one but make sure you stick to it.

3. Revised my weekly marketing plan. We all know that marketing can be more important than writing, that's why I always market my websites, books and affiliate products. Marketing has to be not only weekly but consistent for it to work.

4. Do more training. As you probably already know, I'm trying to learn more about being a marketer and studying books, audios and DVDs. It's a lot to work through and I realised that I needed to set aside time every week so that I can do it more often, instead of whenever I can find the time.

5. Take more chill time. Sometimes, well all the time actually, I find it hard to just sit and do nothing. But taking more downtime is necessary because of all work and no play, etc. So I sorted through all my books and put some that I want to read first, in a drawer, and I've started taking time out to sit and read every week. And it actually feels really good to do it.

So far it's working for me and I believe it can work for you too.

If you're having trouble staying on track with your writing goals, or you don't have any goals or you want to earn more money from your writing, try doing what I did and take some time out to look at the bigger picture of what you want to achieve.

Know how much money you want to make this year, decide how you're going to do it, design your editorial calendar, have a rigid marketing plan, learn whatever it is you need to know but you don't already know, and take some well-earned chill out time.

Then get back to writing.

Why is Writing Always Harder Than It Looks?

"Easy reading is damned hard writing." ~ R L Stevenson

Sometimes I have a brilliant idea about something I want to write.

In my head I see it as amazing and writing it is going to be a dream.

Yet the reality is far from the dream.

I find that even though the idea seemed simple in my head, it's a lot harder to write about it.

The reason for this is because it's much more difficult to write out a description clearly, to really go into the detail of describing what it looks like or how to do something.

That's why instruction books for new appliances are so big. There probably isn't much to know, and to use the appliance isn't hard, but the description in the manual of how to use it seems convoluted.

Recently I bought a new toaster oven. It's simple to operate but the instruction book had such detailed information about what each setting was for and how to set it, that it took a lot of reading.

Yet to use the oven is simple. Just turn it to the correct setting (grill, bake, pizza, toast, etc), adjust the time and oven temperature if needed, press 'start' and voilà.

But the written instructions of how to do it went on for page after page.

And it can also seem like this when you're writing.

The thing you want to write about is simple, but the actual writing is not as easy.

You might be able to see the expression on the face of your character, but describing it to your reader is difficult.

Or you might want to describe how to use a piece of software or a website, but it takes much more writing to describe it, especially when you can't point to the bit you're talking about or use hand gestures to help you to explain something. When all you've got is written words, it can seem daunting.

But never get discouraged when writing about something turns out to be much harder than the idea you could see in your head.

I always find that a detailed outline/blueprint of what I want to write about helps to keep my writing flowing.

It's far better than the dreaded blank page.

---------------

Write Any Book in 28 Days or Less.
 Laid out in an easy to follow style and suitable for writing fiction and non-fiction.
Just follow the advice as you go through the course and by the end you’ll have your manuscript written.

http://ruthiswriting.com/links/writequickly.html