First Drafts

Are you a writer who outlines before starting? Do you write an entire draft and then go back and make revisions or do you write, revise, and edit, chapter by chapter? I don’t think there’s any right or wrong way. I believe whatever works for you—go with it. Here’s an interesting post on the Writer’s Digest blog on the benefits of writing a draft first in case that’s what you want to do. It is titled, “7 Reasons to Write an Entire 1^st Draft Before Going Back to the Beginning.” Benefit Number 7 is: “One of the greatest benefits of writing a truly awful, lousy, no good first draft is that it can only get better from there.” What do you think?

 

And if you’re in the middle of writing a short story, you might want to enter the Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition. The early-bird deadline is November 15, 2013. 

Final draft: -- The last version of a polished manuscript ready for submission to an editor. – Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market