Thursday's Links to Writing & Marketing Blog Posts

THE CFD—CRAPPY FIRST DRAFT

                        

By: Ninie Hammon

Years ago, a famous columnist from a big metro daily and I co-taught a session on column-writing for the Kentucky Press Association Boot Camp. His approach to the craft and mine could not have been more different.

Bob described how he worked on his lead, probably spent a third of the time it took to write the whole column working on that one sentence. Then he crafted and polished a second sentence and hooked it to the first. And then a third. He worked his way through the column that way, paragraph by paragraph so that when he typed the final word in the last sentence, the column was finished.

I didn’t work that way. I described how I sat down at the typewriter (if you’re younger than 40, Google it. There will be pictures.), closed my eyes and started writing. I didn’t stop writing, not for missing information, grammar problems, misspelled words or anything else, until I was completely finished. But when I typed the final word in the last sentence, I was only at the end of the beginning. What followed was a 2^nd draft, a 3^rd, a 7^th, a 12^th; however many it took to polish that rough first draft into a column ready to publish.

Though it’s not my style, it’s easy for me to understand how a journalist could write a column the way Bob did. It’s far harder for me to understand how a novelist could write a book that way, and there are some who do. The difference, of course, is story.

Which brings us to the CFD. 

Read the full article HERE!

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If you missed my writing & marketing tweets and retweets yesterday, here they are again. Tweet: Notes From Tabor Lane: Today's Links to Writing & Marketing Blog Posts

1. Writing Pitfall #1: Lackluster Opening Scenes - Write Divas | Write Divas http://ow.ly/uvfxa
2. The CFD–Crappy First Draft | Ninie Hammon http://ow.ly/uvfYk
3. How Amazon Saved My Life | Pubslush Blog http://ow.ly/uvhxU
4. The Modern Writer: Becoming a Better Writer | Guild Of Dreams http://ow.ly/uvjm0
5. Useful Tools for Writers - CRF Sanders http://ow.ly/uvjDc
6. App Delivers Books in Easy-to-Digest, Bite-Size Chunks for Busy People | The Passive Voice |  http://ow.ly/uvkR4
7. Five Steps To Discover and Build Your Author Brand: With PubSmart’s Kathy Meis http://ow.ly/uwXSw
8. 20 Mind-Blowing Stats To Get You Active On Google+ http://ow.ly/uwXWn
9. Using the Seasons to Fix a Blah Setting http://ow.ly/uwYgk
10. Book Marketing: On Changing Book Covers http://ow.ly/ux0kA
11. 3 Ways to Make Your POVs Equally Interesting http://ow.ly/ux0s1
12. What Is Head Hopping and How Can We Avoid It? http://ow.ly/ux0Bz 
13. Indie Roundup #indielife http://ow.ly/ux0JY   
14. AUTHORS: 3 Signals It Might Be Time To End Your Series http://ow.ly/ux0Qe  
15. Author Website Tech: WordPress Plugins http://ow.ly/ux53s  
16. James Scott Bell: The “Write From The Middle” Method - http://ow.ly/ux58t  

Happy writing and running, Kathy