In the last installment of Wisdom of a Wayfaring Wordsmith I made the awe-inspiring statement that it doesn’t really matter how well your writing appears on the page.

Now, I am in no way relating this statement to the finished product. All writers should be concerned with the content, character and quality of their finished product. What I am speaking of is your first (rough) draft. This is the most essential step to creating a quality end product.

I can’t tell you how many times I sat for hours developing storyboards, outlines, templates, you name it. One day, during a conversation with a fellow writer, I was given this seemingly silly piece of advice: “Why don’t you just write?” That was a good question!

I didn’t put that practice into place right away, but decided to wait until the upcoming NaNoWriMo. November first came and I found myself at the keyboard wanting disparately to start with an outline, but I didn’t. I began only with an idea of the kind of story I wanted to write and within an hour I had a pretty decent story going. By the end of the month I had reached 45,000 words!

There is time for reviewing and editing which is what we will cover next time, but I found that writing FIRST provided a more rewarding experience in a much shorter amount of time.