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The Productive Writer: Get the First Draft Done Fast · The Daily Writer

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Daily Rider Podcast, where we bring you tips and inspiration each day to help you build habits for writing success.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: For more resources, including your free Daily Rider Starter Kit, visit DailyRiderLife.com.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: This week here on the podcast, we've been talking about ways to be a more productive writer.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a question that I want you to consider.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't people finish goals that are important to them?
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's probably a lot of answers to that question, and one obvious reason is that people simply get tired and they don't see a lot of progress toward that goal.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Take writing a book, for example.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you're a perfectionist, writing a book can take you a long time because you're trying to both write and edit as you go.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: When you take that approach, it's easy to get discouraged and just quit.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: I know because it's happened to me before.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: One time a few years ago, this has been probably six or seven years ago, I spent a couple of years working on a book, and in the process, I literally compiled 150 pages worth of notes.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: So get that, get this mental picture going.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: I literally wrote a whole book's worth of notes for this book, yet I never finished the actual book.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason is that I was caught in paralysis by analysis.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: I was really, really stuck, took a ton of notes.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'd read multiple books on the type of book that I was working on, and I just I think I wrote maybe three or four thousand words of the actual book, and then I just gave up on it because I just got so enmeshed in being paralyzed and I wasn't sure where to go.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: I know it sounds ridiculous considering what I do for a living, but this was back when I was a college professor and uh I was just sort of figuring some things out, and I got really, really stuck.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: But my goodness, it's easy to do when you're focused on trying to make something perfect.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And instead of doing that, we should take John Steinbeck's advice about first drafts.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And this is advice that I wish that I would have known six or seven years ago when I got stuck on that particular book.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: John Steinbeck said, write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Rewrite and process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: My goodness, isn't that great advice?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Once you have outlined your book, try to get the first draft done as fast as humanly possible.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And when you do this, this will give you incredible momentum because it's easier to work on a book that's complete.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's really, really hard to stay motivated to work on a book whenever you are writing and editing and trying to make it perfect as you go along.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because you can spend weeks or months working on that one chapter or those couple of chapters.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, if you kind of extrapolate the timeline out of that, it could be years before you get that sucker done.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: So write that first draft as fast as possible.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you have a good outline, but don't try to make it perfect.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Just have a good solid outline.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Then write that sucker.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you'll be really, really pleased by the energy that you feel and the momentum that you have when you get a first draft of that book done.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: It may need a lot of edits, it probably is going to, but that's okay.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: The point is you have a first draft of the book to work with, and you have something complete that you can say, I did this, and it's way easier to work on something that's complete than it is to work on something that's only partially finished, in my opinion.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: So here's today's challenge.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever book project you're working on, try to get a first draft done as fast as you possibly can.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Don't overthink it.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Just do it and let me know how it goes.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening, and I'll see you tomorrow.