Getting the First Draft Down - By Tamsin Cooke

 I don't know if any of you have ever done NaNoWriMo?

It's when you aim to write 50 000 words in one month, about 1600 words a day. It takes place in November and is a great way of keeping you inspired and on target. There's lots of support and it's free to join. In case you are interested, here's a link to their website. 

I did it a couple of years ago, and by the end of the month, I had a first draft of a story. Admittedly it needed an awful lot of work - but first drafts always do! Unfortunately the book didn't sell, but NaNo taught me that I am capable of knuckling down. 

And so I am planning to do it again this year. I have an idea and I'm ready to write. In fact I've been ready to write for a while but I have been procrastinating. My house is clean, the dog has never been walked so much, and I might be going for the Olympic record in bingewatching Netflix. Never have such few words been written in such a long time. 

I have written a beginning but I seem to be preoccupied in making sure it has a killer first few chapters. But I can work that out later. Instead of going over and over the same few pages, I need to get the first draft down to make sure the story actually works. Which is why I am doing NaNo. And once the words are down, then I can play with them.

It's great to know that most authors (possibly even all of them) hate their first drafts too.

"The first draft of anything is shit," by Ernest Hemingway

'For me, it's always been a process of trying to convince myself that what I'm doing in a first draft isn't important. One way you get through the wall is by convincing yourself that it does not matter. No one is ever going to see your first draft. Nobody cares about your first draft. And that's the thing that you may be agonzing over, but honestly, whatever you're doing can be fixed ... For now, just get the words out. Get the story down however you can get it down, then fix it," by Neil Gaiman

"I just give myself permission to suck. I delete about 90 percent of my first drafts ... so it doesn't really matter much on a particualr day I write beautiful and brilliant prose that will stick in the minds of my readers froever becasue there's a 90 percent chance I'm just gonna delete whatever I write anyway. I find this hugely liberating," by John Green

"The first draft is a skeleton... just bare bones. The rest of the story comes later with revising," by Judy Blume

So I am going to give myself permission to write an awful first draft. I will embrace the mess and plan on fixing it later!

Tamsin Cooke

Author of The Scarlet Files Series and Stunt Double Series

Website: tamsincooke.co.uk
Twitter: @TamsinCooke1 

FEBRUARY'S AUTHOR by Sharon Tregenza

JUDY BLUME

Judith Sussman was born on February 12, 1938, in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

She was the second child of Esther and Rudolph Sussman. Her natural creativity was encouraged by her parents and she enjoyed piano lessons and dancing as well as reading. She says: "When I was growing up, I dreamed about becoming a cowgirl, a detective, a spy, or a ballerina. Not a dentist like my father, or a homemaker, like my mother - certainly not a writer, although I always loved to read and lmake up stories inside my head."

Blume's stories were a secret source of pleasure "I made up stories while I bounced a ball against the side of our house. I made up stories playing with paper dolls. And I made them up while I practised the piano by pretending to give piano lessons. I even kept a notebook with the names of my pretend students and how they were doing. I always had an active imagination. But I never wrote down any of my stories. And I never told anyone about them."

When her own two children started preschool - she began to write and published her first novel in 1969.

Blume has been credited with being one of the first authors to write YA novels about subjects that some people considered taboo. From masturbation and menstruation to teen sex, death and birth control.  The American Library Association named her as one of the most frequently challenged authors of the 21st century.

She says: "I wanted to be honest. And I felt that no adult had been honest with me."

She now lives in New York City and Key West Florida with her husband, George Cooper. Between them they have three grown children and one grandchild, whose first word was "book".

Interesting facts about Judy Blume and her work:

1. Despite her critics, Blume's books have sold more than 85 million and have been translated into almost three dozen languages.

2. The film version of Blume's 1981 novel Tiger Eyes was directed by her son, Lawrence Blume.

3. In 1951 and 1952, there were three aeroplane crashes in her hometown of Elizabeth. Blume's father, a dentist, helped identify the remains of the 118 people who died.

Email: sharontregenza.com

Website: www.sharontregenza.com

Twitter: @sharontregenza