Drafting





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Let us see about Drafting. It’s important to form good writing habits early. Mostly such habits involve being organized and consistent. :

• Pick a place to write that’s Comfortable, readily available, and fairly quiet. It may be a desk at home or corner in the library where you can plug in a laptop. The important thing is to get used to writing in a specific place so that when you go there, your subconscious says, “Time to write."

• Choose a time that suits your schedule and gives you couple of hours of uninterrupted work. Indulge any little habits that help you concentrate – background music, Gummi Bears, Diet Cokes.

• Become proficient with one computer operating system and one word processing program, and try to stay with them. The frustrations that come from switching back and forth between system and programs can upset your train of thought and hamper your writing.


A caution here. Sometimes when you’re under pressure, you can‘t afford the luxury of having everything the way you want it. The authors of this book have both written speeches on airplanes and stayed up late to meet deadlines, and you too may sometimes have to throw your routines aside and do the best you can. Routine can be enormously helpful, but less than – ideal conditions shouldn’t become an excuse for not writing.

Overcoming Writer’s Block :

Even experienced writers sometimes have trouble getting started. Because most of us sense that beginnings are important, we sometimes take them too seriously, feeling that they have to be good. Not necessarily. Remember, when you begin a project you’re only writing a draft – Whatever you put down can be revised later. So if you stall because no opening sentence seems good enough, just lower your standards and put down something anything – that will get you moving. What you should not do is wait for inspirations. As the economist and author John Kenneth Galbraith has put it.

All writers know that on some golden morning they are touched by the wand – are on intimate terms with poetry and cosmic truth. I have experienced those moments myself. Their lesson is simple: it’s total illusion and the danger in the illusion is that you will wait for that moment. Such is the horror of having to face the typewriter that you will spend all your time waiting. I am persuaded that most writers, like most shoemakers, are about as good one day as the next […] hangovers aside. The difference is the result of euphoria, alcohol, imagination. The meaning is that one had better to go to his or her typewriter every morning and stay there regardless of the seeming result. It will be much the same. ( John Kenneth Galbraith : Writing, Typing and Economics )


If you’re working on a long project, you may hit a temporary block when you start up again after a day has passed. When that happens, try reading back over what you wrote the day before. Backtracking will usually get you moving again.

Finding Your Pace :

Writers work at different paces, and you need to find the rhythms that suit you best. Some writers compose their first draft rapidly, getting ideas down quickly and seldom hesitating about word choice. We call these writers sprinter. Most sprinters think of their first draft as a discovery draft and plan to revise heavily on the next draft.

Other writers write first drafts much more slowly, stopping frequently to reread and think about what they’ve written. They change words, delete, and move sentences around, and spend considerable time staring at their screen. They may also pace, snack, stop to do little chores, and worry. We call these writers Plodders. While the plodder doesn’t usually regard the first draft as final, he or she feels that when it is done the hardest part of the job is probably over.

Then there are the perfectionists. These writers have to get every thing right the first time to think out each sentence as they write it and change words as they work. They cannot go on to another paragraph until they are completely satisfied with the one they’ve just written. A good term for writers like these is bleeders. They suffer more than other writer, and it takes them forever to produce a piece of writing.

Try to start out as a sprinter. Sprinting gets you started, and you create a text you can start working on but if you’re not the sprinter type, don’t warty about it. Many productive writers are plodders, and some of us just have to work out ideas as we go. In the long run, plodders may not take any more time than sprinters to turn out good finished product. But don’t allow yourself to be a bleeder. Bleeders are the most likely to develop writer’s block and to miss their deadlines. The agony is rarely worth it.

Postponing Corrections :

Whether you are a sprinter or plodder, put off making corrections in spelling and mechanics until the end. When you are actually writing, you shouldn’t be fretting about where to put commas and whether the word harass has one r or two. You can fix such details later. Writers who worry about mechanics too soon stifle their creativity and divert energy needed for devils – oping their ideas. Better to write first and edit later.

When you’ve finished you draft, put it aside – overnight if you can – to allow your mind clear and give you fresh outlook on what you’ve written. This is the time for incubation, period to let your unconscious mull over what you’ve done before you start to revise.








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