13th and last? draft complete and lessons learnt.

Just finished another draft of my book. I don’t know how many times I’ve told myself but I think this might be my last edit. The last few weeks have been nails to the chalkboard. I’m so over this book now. Story fatigue I’m calling it. I’m tired of this story, but not my others.

I’ve just got a few people to go over it and tell me what they think and then I might finally be ready to publish. ‘Bout time now and I’ve learnt so much from this book.

1. Plan it out first.

I just went and started word vomiting all over the page when I first began. It was all stored in my head i just had to write it out. In hindsight I should have written out plan, like listing it in order of events and make note of important things. Stuff like that. really held myself back by not doing that.

2. Practical experience is the best experience.

I could learn all the theory in the world at uni, but actually putting it into practice is the best thing I could do. Writing and re-writing has told me what I’m good at and what I need to improve. And getting to issues at the beginning is better then letting them fester. So that means formatting my word document before writing as opposed to later.

3. Pushing through negative states of mind.

All the times when I didn’t feel like writing or wanted to do others things more really kept me back. Even in the last weekend I was putting off doing the last 20 pages. If I had done 1 or 2 pages here and there instead of waiting for days where I could sit down for up to 6 hours and write would have saved me so much time. And I wouldn’t be writing this companion article at one in the morning.

If you don’t feel motivated now, then make yourself motivated. There are a lot of ways to get you in the mood.

• Thinking over your story with a positive outlook.
• Looking at images for a cover photo, that helps me.
• Thinking about all the negative outcomes of not finishing your book, like time/energy wasted and goals not completed.
• Realise that just because you feel a bit shit about your story doesn’t mean it actually is. Some people are very interested in hearing and listening about it.

4. You’re work is directly related to the effort you put in.

Don’t feel like doing that next edit? Then your work won’t be as good as if you did. Don’t want to do a few pages today, then the completion date is another day delayed and moving onto other works is a day delayed. Don’t put in the effort to fix the little things now, then you have to do it next time. It all adds up. I could of have finished this book ages ago, but I prevented myself. But i can be so God damn lazy. It’s unbelievable actually.