I’m not really sure what kind of Google search I did to stumble up YA author Veronica Roth’s website, but BOY am I glad I did. Veronica is the author of my oldest daughter’s favorite books: Divergent (Book 1)
Not a lot of preachy articles or tutorials that you may find on some author’s sites, but just nuggets of gold as she wrote and published her books. Something that I hope to achieve with this site as I write my first novel and subsequent books (*wink*).
The nugget I read that really resonated with me today was all about the level of my commitment I need to make when writing the draft of my book.
At this point I have written about 30,000 words but I have been stuck there for at least two weeks because I continue to go back and “fix” things that are wrong with the story. Changing names, eliminating or adding characters, among other things. Here’s what she wrote about committing to the draft.
COMMIT. That means not even doubling back to check something. I mean it. If you forget a character’s name, who cares? Make up a new one and fix it later. (In fact, that’s REALLY easy to fix. Find/replace, anyone?) If you double back, even if it’s just for a few minutes, you will mess up your momentum. (Probably.)
Here’s the link to the full post: http://veronicarothbooks.blogspot.com/2011/11/some-nano-advice-dont-look-back.html
So starting tonight…ok tomorrow, I am going to keep pushing through. No going back and reading/editing the first 30,000 words over and over. Because if I don’t get over this hump, it will take me ten years to write this book!