craft Archives - Page 5 of 44

A zero draft
fills up

drop
by
drop

every
drop
matters

Trying to write in a busy world is hard.
That’s a fact.
And yet . . .
if you don’t write your book
it won’t get written.

What can you do?

Take a small step.

The big plans you had when you began
may have fallen apart
and that’s okay.

Can you write down ONE idea today?
Can you add ONE drop to your zero draft?

One drop a day
thirty days in a row
will add up
to thirty thoughts
in thirty days.

That may not seem like much
until you realize
that you have been preparing your mind
to write this story
and that’s where stories grow
–in your imagination.

Any empty mind
can’t write a story.

Every drop matters.
Every thought counts.

Snippet:

Big ideas . . .

. . . they cease to exist
if I fail to follow up
on them with steady
string of small ideas
that make each a reality.
~ Twyla Tharp

The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It
by Twyla Tharp (Author) and Mark Reiter (Contributor)

Booktalk: All it takes to make creativity a part of your life is the willingness to make it a habit. It is the product of preparation and effort, and is within reach of everyone.

Read this library book online with Overdrive

A zero draft
captures all
the possibilities

The first time I tried Camp NaNoWriMo, my goal was to write 5,000 words.

To my surprise, I wrote 39,368 words.

This may not seem like a lot — until you compare it to the very first book I sold.

The manuscript for Air Show was 40 words long.

Snippet:
White clouds, blue sky–
Up above . . .

as.in1

Eagles fly . . .

McDONNELL DOUGLAS F-15 EAGLE (1972)

as.in2

Up until this point, I always began my writing time by revising what I had written the day before and then writing new material.

For my first Camp NaNoWriMo I decided to take a different approach — and write a zero draft of story notes. I started a Word document and wrote down each and every word that came to mind for a month.

The characters, the settings, and the story changed each and every day, but I didn’t go back and revise the old notes. I just wrote down my new ideas as they came to me. Day after day, I kept writing, and writing, and writing.

By the end of the month, I had 39,368 words of story notes. I had also figured out who the characters were, what the settings were, and how I wanted the story to move from beginning to end. Writing all of those notes for my zero draft immersed me in the world of my story. The next month, when I began my first draft, the words flowed out . . .