The Author Huddle: 6 Tips to Finish Your First Draft

This week’s NaNo Coach, author Kristyn Kusek Lewis, sat down with Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish, to ask his writing advice:

Wrimos, lower the bar! According to Daniel Wallace, one of the most important things you can do this month is to not think too much. He knows of what he speaks: He is the author of five novels, including the acclaimed Big Fish, which was made into a motion picture of the same name in 2003, and is currently running on Broadway as a musical.

He also happens to frequent the same local café where I often write, and we met there recently to discuss some ways that you can make the most of the month. Here, his advice:

Much of writing is just doing it. I have a sign in my office that says Sit Down in big letters. There’s a tendency to let writing fall to the fifth or sixth place on our to-do lists each day, after shopping or cleaning or whatever, but it needs to be first or second. Commit to having a messy house—it means you have your priorities straight.
Suspend your editorial function while you’re writing a first draft—don’t worry so much about quality at this stage. Whether they take one month or several years, first drafts are not meant to be good. Spend this month just getting the stuff out and then when the month is over, I would put it away for a while. When you come back to it weeks or months later, it will be easier to discover what’s good and dispense with the things that aren’t.”
You simply cannot be thinking too much while you’re writing a first draft—in fact, that’s a great way not to write. A lot of my students hit the wall because they’re thinking too much, they want to take it really slowly and agonize over every word. A novel is going to take hard work no matter how you do it, so don’t get hung up on a single sentence at this phase, just get it out and know that you’re going to go back to it later.
Writing is tough for everyone, myself included, so you can’t get tripped up by a lack of confidence—or too much. In fact, if you think of yourself as a great writer, that’s a death sentence. You must know that you can always improve. I know that I’m imaginative and can craft a really great sentence but writing is very difficult for me—and it should be. It’s hard work.
One of the great joys of writing is the world you create through your senses. When you miss somebody, you miss their smell, the jacket they wore… Focus on these details, because it’s through the compilation of these things that we slowly create the imaginary worlds that become our work.
It helps to not be too precious about how you do your writing. I used to only write in one place but now I take my laptop everywhere—the backyard, the sofa…working in different environments can inspire in unexpected ways.

Kristyn Kusek Lewis is the author of How Lucky You Are (Grand Central, 2013), which was a Target Emerging Authors Pick and started as a 2007 NaNoWriMo project. Her forthcoming novel will be published by Grand Central in Winter 2015. She is a veteran magazine writer and former magazine editor whose work has appeared in the New York Times, O: The Oprah Magazine, and many other national publications. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with her family.

Top photo collage made using an image by melstampz.