There's a time and place for everything

A lot of books fail before they've even made it out of the "First draft" phase. The First draft is the physical act of actually writing the book and the reason for that is because the author actively spends time reading through what they have written... whether this is done in an attempt to spell check or ensure that the plot flows smoothly doesn't really matter - the result is still the same.

I am guilty of this as much as the next author... however, I was blessed to have met a fellow author who suggested that I read Stephen King's On Writing. Initially, I was reluctant to do so because I know that Stephen King is a Horror writer and I avoid the horror genre like the plague. However, once I took the plunge, I was mighty glad that I did because it covered a lot of points that can be taken over to most any genre of book.

One point that came up was:-

When writing, write for yourself - Stephen King

At first, I didn't fully grasp what Stephen was telling me - because I'm not going to be buying my own book, am I? After a deal of thought about it (and some more reading), I came to see that he was saying "There will be typos and things that maybe you could explain better - but this isn't the time for that... carry on writing and come back to it later on".

Another point he addressed for me in that statement was that word counts or page numbers aren't a part of the bigger picture at this point in time - that will be dealt with later on in the process. Just write, once you have taken the story as far as you can go, then is the time to edit it.

As an author, I couldn't agree more with the five words quoted above... and to be honest, I wish someone had said them to me much, much sooner in my journey to becoming an author because they have turned the way that I write right onto it's head.

At this point in time, it doesn't matter if your book looks like an entire collection of encyclopedias - the time to decide what to do about that will come much later on once you've got it written. Chances are good that there will be some bits that you'll strip out altogether, while other parts might even make a good sequel. You never know, you might even find enough to cover more than one book from this first draft.