What did you do this weekend?

While I was doing this…

My daughter was doing this…

…writing an 80K novel. She sent it to me this weekend, and I read it.

It’s a fantastic story. (I’m not biased in the least!)

I’m super proud of her because she works full time, is a wife and mother, volunteers 2x a week for her church youth group, mentors a group of girls, and even works as a wedding planner on the weekends.

She’s busy. But she found time to write her novel, just a little at a time, all the way until she got to the end. Because she had a story in her and it just had to get out.

Do you have story in you? You don’t have to write it in a day, or even a month—it took my daughter nearly 8 months to finish her story.

But she finished.

Early on, I gave her some tips to getting to The End…and today, I’m passing them on to you.

Susie’s Three Not-So-Secret Tips to writing to The End. (and getting your amazing story on the page!)

Start with a Brilliant Burst!

Brilliant Bursts are chunks of time carved out to dive in and get your story off to a blazing start. It might be a weekend devoted to writing. It might be every night for a week. It might even be a day off from work. The key to a Brilliant Burst is that you get momentum to keep going by laying down a large chunk of work.

During this Brilliant Burst you might:

• Tell yourself the story – summarize your plot from beginning to end so you can see the entire story (and yes! you can change it!)
• Write the first three chapters. Sometimes, before I can tell myself the story, I need to FEEL the story. Which means, because I have a sense of where I’m going, I sit down and write the first three chapters. This gives me a chance to ignite the story all the way to the second act, (or nearly), get to the know the characters and dig into the plot. THEN, I go back and “tell myself the story.”

Create Bite-sized goals

Baby Steps to the Big Story. My daughter wrote her story in tiny bits—half-scenes, a few paragraphs here and there, sometimes entire chapters over the weekends. She wrote over lunchtime, or when she was commuting to work (with her husband driving!) and in the evenings after she put Bubby to bed. She gave herself reasonable goals, in reasonable time-frames.

AND…

She called me to inform me of those goals. Which leads to the next secret…

Accountability

Find a cheer leader. Maybe it’s a writing partner, maybe it’s a coffee friend, maybe it’s your mother. But it’s someone to whom you can report your word count regularly. Someone who can cheer for you. Someone who might even read your MS and offer encouragement. (I read all her scenes and highlighted all my favorite lines!) Having a cheer leader is a strong motivator.

Note that in that list I didn’t suggest you figure out how to publish it. Or market it. Or even what you’ll do next. At this point, you just want to Get. It. Done. You’ll rewrite later.

And, once you’ve rinsed, repeated and pumped out more books, we’ll talk about creating a publishing strategy. But for now…

Go! Write something brilliant.

Because, your story matters.

Susie May

P.S. Need a little help carving out that writing time? (and the REST of your life?) My Brilliant Writing Planner was created for normal people like my daughter who are juggling ALL of life, not just writing. Check it out here! (And, the Planner is $20 off RIGHT NOW – only $39.99!)