The First Draft Is Supposed to Be Messy

I’m at a writers retreat down the coast this week.
Hosted by me, attended by me.

I’m working on my next book being published by Wiley in October, and took off to Officeworks yesterday to print the 140 page side currently written. Of that I honestly think 60% of what I’ve written is total rubbish.

However..!

I’m glad I’ve got stuff to work with, and with writing, the first step is just getting it all out of your head onto a page (fluency), and separating the editing part til later on.

Anyway my key criteria with this book is just to PUNCH THE POINT, not fluff around with extra detail that won’t help the reader get the result they’re after.

This involves ruthless editing, using story and metaphors in a value-adding way (not to just pad out words), and thinking of interesting ways to describe an approach (one concept I came up with today was the “Walk of Tame”, something we should avoid, more on that later…

Maybe it’s my bias as a reader but when it comes to non-fiction, I just enjoy more actionable reads, what about you?