Using Your Outline to Write Your Rough Draft: Part 1

Hi, friends and future authors, this is Lynn Elikqitie Smargis, ghostwriter and publisher at Unicorn Publishing Company, with another episode of the Write, Edit and Publish podcast. I wanted to tell you, though I'm going to be changing the name over. So, instead of Write, Edit and Publish, I decided to make it more focused, because this podcast is for professionals who are self-publishing their book, and that's what Unicorn Publishing specializes in walking professionals through self-publishing their book. We are not like your traditional or hybrid publishers. My company is very different because I am a creative, I respect the rights of other creatives, and so what I do is a little different as a publishing company is. I'm not actually working on publishing your book to represent you or to take your money. I am actually using, like you can use, my publishing company to walk you through the self-publishing process and to coach you through the whole process so you don't make the mistakes that cost people thousands of dollars and a whole lot of time. So that's one of the main differences. Anyway, I changed the name of the. I'm changing the name of the podcast, so in this transition you might hear me accidentally say write, edit and publish. I'm so used to saying it. You might also see some of the old intros until I get it changed over, either on YouTube or if you're listening on audio. So that's okay, we're going to get changed over by episode 15. So in these next 10 to 15 episodes you'll hear a little bit of both, but then after episode 15, everything will be changed over to publishing for professionals. But you can find the Write, Edit and Publish podcast under Write, Edit and Publish. Right now, we're Publishing for Professionals. You should be able to find it. So I'll come out with a little bit of a new look and a new cover for the new podcast.

01:54

I'm really excited about that, and this change came about after I was thinking about it and I was looking at the different other podcasts that are out there and I thought, you know, publishing for professionals is actually more on point for me, because that's what I do. I help professionals such as thought leaders, speakers, executives publish their work. Now, whether that's a book or whether that is like a corporate online entity that needs assistance with publishing their you know it needs assistance with publishing and using a ghostwriter to publish their content so they can be seen as a thought leader in their space. I do that as well. So if you are a person who is an executive speaker or a thought leader, or you know someone who is one of those, please reach out and share this podcast with them today. I'd love for them to get the valuable information that's on this podcast, which talks about all the different aspects of self-publishing and writing your book. All right, so let's jump into today's topic.

02:50

I'm really excited to talk about using your outline to write your first draft, because in the last several episodes we've been talking about the different outline processes, some different programs you can use to outline. You don't have to use a program to outline. You can use paper and pencil, and we talked about that. So you don't have to use a program to outline. You can use paper and pencil, and we talked about that. So if you're interested in learning more about outlining and why you always need to outline, you should always outline first before you start writing your book. Definitely go back and listen to the last three episodes where I talk about all the different paths and components of outlining and why it's important and how to utilize a good outline to write your book.

03:24

So if you haven't utilized an outline and you started writing your book, don't worry. I've had clients who've done that before it doesn't mean you can't move forward with your book. So if you are one of those people who have just started writing your book because you felt the passion or desire or the instinct to write your book, that is perfectly fine. It is awesome that you're so inspired and passionate about your project that you just started writing your book. But if you don't have an outline, you'll definitely need one. So what I would recommend is, if you have started writing your book, to just pause it for a second and then start writing your outline and complete your outline right. And remember you don't have to overthink your outline. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be a good guide. And so once you have your guide, your outline, written, then what you do is go back to see what you've written already and take that content and put it in the chapters it needs to belong to, so that you have an organized way to move forward.

04:17

So you don't want to keep continue writing, unless you're really in a hot spot and you really don't want to stop because you're really just like jamming it on. You're feeling it, you keep writing, but you definitely want to take a pause and write that outline so that you do have a organized book moving forward. You don't want to just keep writing on and on and on without an outline, because then typically what happens with that is that people will be writing their book for six months and then they'll be like, well, I don't know where to go next, and then, once they get the outline done, they might figure out that half of their work isn't part of their book and they just not wasted all your time writing it, because you can always use that content somewhere. But if your goal is to write a book and you've just spent six months writing a book and only three months of it was really productive towards the work in your outline, then that is definitely a time that has been misplaced, right. So we want to use our time efficiently and effectively, and we'll go over time management and writing skills in another episode, but today we're going to talk about outlining, and so outlining really helps you avoid making that mistake of you know, oh, which content should I write next? And just you know, writing in the dark, basically is what I call it. So. So today we're going to talk about um, outlining and writing your book based on your outline. So the first part we're going to talk about outlining and writing your book based on your outline. So the first part we're going to talk about is preparing for the journey.

05:42

So before you dive into writing, give your outline another look. So one of the things I always advise my clients is that if you have written an outline, step back from it for a day, maybe two days, three days, maybe a week, and then come back to it and look at it and see with fresh eyes do I need to change anything on this outline? Do I need to add anything, edit anything? Don't worry about the titles, just the chapters and the parts of your outline should be more of, like you know, ideas for that chapter, and it can be very bland and very dry, it doesn't matter.

06:12

You don't have to pick the titles for your chapters or your book until you're having your book formatted, so you don't have to worry about great, fabulous, sexy titles at this point. All you have to do is make sure you have a general topic title for your page. So that might be something like cooking with sweet potatoes, right? Because you're writing a recipe book and you're writing a recipe book on a paleo one, and so paleo, if you're not familiar with. It doesn't use grains. So maybe one chapter is cooking with sweet potatoes and you're going to have a better title for it later, but that's the title you have for it now because it's your chapter on sweet potatoes. So you get the idea right. Just don't overthink the titles. A lot of people do that way too early on, this early on. All you want to do is focus on organizing your content and getting it written down. So review your outline right?

07:09

Say, at this point you want to also set a realistic daily word count goal. So what I recommend for that is to just typically what I tell people is to sit down for a half an hour and write and then see how many words you write. It might be sit down for a half an hour and write and then see how many words you write. It might be 250 words in a half an hour. So you know, if you write 250 words in a half an hour, and this is brain dump words and what I mean by brain dump words is that you're just sitting down, you have a topic and you're just writing whatever comes to your mind right?

07:32

Don't worry about this point, about grammar, editing or organizational. You know editing, which means like, oh, does this go right in the timeline? Just write, that's all you need to do at this point. But you do need a topic to write on, right, and this is going to. This topic is going to come from your outline. So maybe chapter one is your chapter on sweet potatoes, right, going back to our example, and you're just going to sit down and write all the things you know about cooking with sweet potatoes. That's all you're going to do, okay, so for that half an hour, find out how many words you write. Maybe that's 200. So you know, if you write 200 words with a timer, right, and you put that timer on, you've written 200 words in a half an hour. You could probably write 400 words, 350 or 400 words in an hour.

08:15

Now, it might change a little bit, of course, depending on the day, right? If you're having a great day, you might be able to write a little more. If you're having a not so great day, you might be writing a little bit less, and that's okay. You just need some sort of average to start a goal with and you can always change this writing word number goal later, right, it doesn't have to be the same, remember, when you're writing.

08:32

Writing is a process. It's a creative process and it's open to change. So don't get really hung up on the actual number. You just need a number as a guide. Okay, so if you know you can write 400 words a day, you can create a schedule on how many words can you write in a week.

08:48

So say you're deciding I'm going to write 400 words a day, monday, wednesday, friday, on my lunch break, between 12 and 1. Okay, so that means you can write 1,200 words a week. So that means in a month you would be able to write 4,800 words. Now that's great. So if you're writing 400 words a day and you're writing it three days a week, that's going to bring you to 4,800 words a month. Now, it might be a little bit less than that, it might be a little bit more, that's okay. So that means if you're writing 4,800 words a month and your typical book is around 40,000 words, it's going to take you around 10 months to a year to finish that book.

09:29

Now, that's if you're consistent, right? That's not including life kind of getting in your way and your car breaking down or you get that flat tire, whatever it is, and then you can't write that day, right, because you're spending your lunch break and putting out a fire or doing something else that's important. Maybe your kid is sick that day and you had to stay home with your kid, right? Give yourself grace. So I always say add 20 to that for life, um, and so that 10 to 12 months might be 12 to 14 months to finish your rough draft. So if you want to shorten that time, this is where Ghostwriter comes in super handy, right. So I've had my clients who are super busy and work full-time jobs write a book in a year, get a rough draft done in a year, even though they're working a full-time job, because they have me on the other end writing for them when they're not writing, and I can write up to 8,000 words in eight hours so I can get the content done a lot faster. So that's where writing, using a ghost writer to write your book, is really handy, all right.

10:27

So now that you have your writing schedule, you want to have a writing space. So one of the things I like to talk about is cuing yourself right. This is really important for sleep habits, for good sleep habits, what we call sleep hygiene, which means like the habits that you do before you go to sleep. So, in other words, like you don't want to be playing exciting video games before you go to sleep because you're all amped up with adrenaline and then it takes a while for your heart rate to go down, so you don't sleep well, right. So all the things like taking a hot bath, relaxing before you go to bed, maybe it's reading a book, maybe it's just listening to music, maybe it's just listening to a really relaxing ASMR music or watching an ASMR relaxing video on YouTube. I've done that before. So, whatever it is, you have these good habits and certain spaces are good for sleeping, like your bedroom, which is why I never work in my bedroom, and that is a recommendation I would make to everyone listening here.

11:18

You don't want to write your book in your bedroom. That's not a good idea, because when you're in your bedroom, your brain's going to be thinking, sleeping, and it's going to be so hard for you to write your book. Another place I would definitely not recommend for you to write your book is your kitchen table, because that's where you eat and also where people are pretty busy. So you want to have your own space. Maybe that's just a very small desk in the corner of your living room. Maybe it's a small desk in the corner, in like you have an extended hallway somewhere, or maybe you have an extra guest bedroom that doesn't get used a lot, or maybe you turn that guest bedroom into your office, wherever it is. Just have a designated space to write, because when you sit down, that triggers your brain saying, oh, we're going to write. When you sit down, that triggers your brain saying, oh, we're gonna write.

11:58

So my desk you can't see it is actually in the corner of my kitchen, and the reason I have it here is because I actually built a studio downstairs but the problem was downstairs my wi-fi was really bad and my cell phone signal was really bad, so I couldn't talk to people downstairs in my office, so I have to come upstairs to do it. So I just literally made this space right up against my window that I look out at the beautiful trees outside of my Portland Oregon home and this is my writing space, my workspace, and it's great because even though it is in the kitchen, it's actually facing away from everything. So I'm very focused when I'm sitting at my desk. So pick a space you can be focused at, to prepare to make it your writing space. That way, when you go there, you think, oh, I'm writing right. It could be sitting on your living room couch, in one corner of your couch, and you always sit in the same spot. It could be that too. Maybe it's you set up a little space in your family room, but you get the picture All right.

12:50

Now, next, your success tip for this is your outlines, like a treasure map, and each X marks a scene or chapter waiting to be discovered, which is really exciting. Okay, starting strong, let's break down your process, all right. So first, what I like to talk about is taking your book outline and putting it in Google Docs. So what I do, and what my advice is to all of my listeners, is that if you're writing a book, you want to make each Google Doc a chapter of your book. So one Google Doc's chapter one, one Google Doc's chapter two. One Google Doc is chapter three, and you're going to put all these Google Docs in a folder in your drive. Now, if you don't want to use a folder in your drive and you want to use your laptop, that's perfectly fine. You can write it on a Word doc, you can write this in pages for Apple, whatever. It is right.

13:35

But what I always suggest is put each chapter on a separate document. Why do you want to do this? For several different reasons. One is because if you go into a chapter and you realize you want to edit the material, it's much easier to edit the material if you're not scrolling through 10 chapters to find chapter 10, right. Or you're not scrolling through five chapters. You're like, where did I put this? And if you're moving it and this has happened on more than one occasion moving content from one chapter to another, it is much, much easier to have the two chapters open side by side on your computer and then you can say, okay, I'm going to move this from chapter five to chapter six and you can clearly see where in chapter six you want to move it to, because you have both documents open. So make each chapter its own document and then put that in a folder.

14:17

So, whether that's on Google Drive, which is what I work on, or you're doing it in Pages or Microsoft Word or whatever software you're doing it in. Or if you're doing this on paper, right, then I would say get those little manila folders and you just put chapter one, two, three, four, five and then you put. If you're writing it on paper, you take those papers for chapter one and put it in your chapter one actual physical folder, chapter two in its actual physical folder, and so on and so forth. This keeps you organized and it also helps too, because every time I've written with somebody they move a chapter or split a chapter right. So like, maybe chapter nine is too big and they want to split it into chapter nine and 10.

14:54

I have a client recently do this, so we took his chapter and we split it into two chapters to make it more easily readable, so he wouldn't have one really really long chapter in his book. And so, or if you're moving chapter, maybe chapter nine is now turning into chapter seven. Much, much easier to just change the title on that document than it is to cut and paste that whole thing. And then you're open to making a mistake and to just change the title on that document than it is to cut and paste that whole thing. And then you're open to making a mistake and not getting all of your content and actually pasting it in the right place, and then that leads to a whole bunch of editing that you're going to be using your time and or your money on. All right, my friends, we're going to take a break right here, but when we come back, we are going to talk more about writing your rough draft using your outline. Hi, friends and future authors, this is Lynn Lickety-Smargis, back for the second half of episode 10 on publishing for professionals the new name for my podcast and we're talking about using your outline to write your rough draft. All right, so we talked in the first half a little bit about writing habits, establishing your space for writing, setting your word goal counts, to figure out how long it's going to take you to write your rough draft and how a ghostwriter can help you achieve those goals faster. All right, so in the second half, let's talk about setting your key elements, building momentum, hooking your readers. So this is a little bit actually later in the process.

16:37

I want to actually, if you're thinking about, oh, what's my voice going to be? Or, you know, setting the tone, definitely do that. I would definitely say what is your style going to be for your writing? And this can be very general, right, and you don't even really have to figure that out now, because you can always go back and edit the style up later. But think about a general style like do you want to be serious, professional? Do you want to be more fun and whimsical? What is kind of the style of your writing? Is it going to be more editorial? Think about that and definitely pick a general style right that you want to write in so that you don't have to do so much work going back. If you decide you want to change your style a little bit or maybe niche it down a little bit, that's okay, all right.

17:15

So every you're going to use your outline, right? And whether that outline is a traditional outline, whether you're using an outline program or you're writing it out on paper, you're going to use that outline points as prompts. So you could expand those bullet points into paragraphs, right? So whatever your topic is on your bullet point, expand that into a paragraph. Start brain dumping. You're going to develop your elements and you're going to develop that content. So, no matter what it is and I'm just talking nonfiction here fiction is completely different so that I don't coach people on but definitely, with your nonfiction, just start brain dumping. All of your bullet points for your outlines, for your chapter, right? So if you're doing that mind map, this is going to be your second and third bullet point out from your chapter. Okay. So just start brain dumping and writing information.

18:09

One of the things I like to do is where my outline started. I like to highlight it and make it like yellow or bright blue so that I know where I started that topic, so that when I need to go back to edit it, I can tell where I started that topic easily until I get a good flow going in my book. All right, which brings us to our next topic, which is maintaining flow. So chapter by chapter method is a really good way to keep consistency with your flow. And what does that mean? Flow means that when you finish one chapter, the next chapter title makes sense, right? So, going back to the recipe book, if you're talking about grains, right, or grain-free cooking, and you have the chapter one is on sweet potatoes. Maybe chapter two is cooking with white potatoes, right, and so that makes sense because cooking with sweet potatoes is one, cooking with white potatoes is your next.

19:01

Or if you're writing a book on, let's say, gardening, and I'm using gardening because I love the garden and it's an easy example for me and you probably will hear gardening in more episodes. So if you start with you know your chapter one with how to plant your succulents. Chapter two might be like you know, uh, when to water your succulents, or like what to do after you plant them. Or chapter two might be like you know when to water your succulents, or like what to do after you plant them. Or chapter two might be you know, this is what's going to happen if your plants go into shock after you replant them, whatever. It is right. So it just has to make sense and that's what that means. So when we're talking about maintaining flow, that one chapter makes sense, going into the next chapter. So like for that gardening one we just talked about with you know, planting your succulent. So chapter one is not going to be planting your succulent and chapter two is taking care of your perennials. Right, that doesn't make any sense whatsoever, because perennials and succulents could be completely two different types of plants and they're in two different. They could be in two different categories, so that succulent could be a perennial, could not be a perennial. So you want to make sure that your chapters make sense, that they flow into each other seamlessly. Okay, and it doesn't have to be super great at this point.

20:13

If you have a chapter you're stuck on. You're like, oh, I don't know if I need to add a chapter in between two and three, or four and five or whatever it is. That's okay. Just make yourself a note in your document somewhere saying like, hey, I want to write a different chapter in between this because the flow isn't good. Okay, you can always leave yourself notes, all right, make sure you, when you're writing, reference your outline, okay. So if you're writing, you're like, hmm, I don't know if this is on topic, reference your outline. If you're writing and it's not on topic, but it sounds really good, maybe it's just a point you didn't think about in our idea. You didn't think about and continue on with it. Right, add it to your outline. That's perfectly fine. You can change your outline as you're going along your rough draft. Every one of my clients have done that. I have done that personally. So sure you're tracking your completed sections.

20:57

So as you're going along your outline, check off like physically check off what you've written, or highlight what you've written, and that way you know what you have to write next. Okay, I love using color-coded outlining or highlighting. That's really great use of your highlighter, so you can use that whatever you do whatever works for you, okay. But what I say is, don't completely erase it, because you may want to go back and reference that later and be like, oh, I think I want to move that chapter to here, but you won't have the content. So I always tell people don't scribble it out where you can't see it or put a line through it where it's hard to read. I say check it off or highlight it if you finished it, and then that way you can still see it when you want to go back and reference it later. One of my clients he has a green, yellow and red and so red means he has to work on that content, yellow means it's in editing and green means it's finished. So whatever works for you highlighting, checking it off, maybe it's, underlining it with a ruler, whatever it is, or underlining it on your program that's fine. Just have a system that works for you that you know that you've checked off that outline but you don't want to erase that data point so that when you go back to check on it later it's still there.

22:13

All right, note areas that might need a little more content or research and then make spots for later detail. So if you want to add more detail on a spot and you're not sure what it is you want to add. That's fine, just make sure you uh, in google docs it's a. It's a really great feature. It's called comment. So if you right click and highlight something and then sorry, if you highlight something and then right click and then the menu will pop up on the right and says comment, I leave myself comments and tag myself. So my own personal books. That way I know I need to go back to the section and either edit, add more content or maybe move it to a different space.

22:49

All right, bridging sections. Make sure you're creating smooth transitions Again, not only between chapters but between paragraphs, and if it's not, make sure that you tag it and make yourself a note that you need to go back and fix that transition Again. This is another really great way to use a ghostwriter. People get stuck in transitions all the time. I commonly help people out of their stuck transitions, so I am a great ideator, which a lot of ghostwriters are. But if you need somebody that's a great ideator and a ghostwriter, definitely give me a call or book me, go to my website, writeforyoume and book a discovery call or hit me up on my contact form.

23:32

All right, so you want to make sure that you maintain the pacing and word count. So what I say about word count for each chapter is this you don't have to have like exactly 2,500 words per chapter. Nobody does that, and if anybody's shooting for that goal, that is a useless goal. That's just really a waste of your time and energy. We are so programmed. We're writing college papers and high school papers and people say, oh, it has to be a thousand words. I think that's ridiculous, because no topic should be bound by a word count, right? I mean, clearly, if you're writing an editorial in a newspaper or magazine or whatever that is right a digital publication, you only have so many words. So that makes sense, right, because you can't just ramble on and on and go over the word count because there is a space limitation. But as far as writing, you want to write enough detail that it gets your point across, educates, whatever it is, inspires, right. But you don't want to think of, oh, I have to write 2,500 words, so you just start filling it with fluff because no one wants to read that fluff. Okay, all right. So I hope this has been helpful in helping you start your rough draft.

24:41

We're going to talk more about this in next episode or, sorry, in episode 12. My episode 11 is going to be a fabulous guest and he's going to come on to talk about brands and how to use your book to boost your brand, which is really fabulous. His name is Brandon Berkmeyer, so definitely make sure you hit that like or subscribe button to tune in to the next episode of Publishing for Professionals, so you get every episode dropped right into your media player. All right, my friends, thanks for joining me today on the podcast. I'm excited to bring you a new community for my podcast listeners, called Publishing for Professionals, so make sure to hit that follow button to find out more about my new community when the announcement drops. In this community, you're going to find author support, free self-publishing videos and be able to network with other thought leaders, speakers and executives, and I'm really excited to have our first featured guest next week on the show.

25:39

All right, so remember, don't let overwhelm stop. You Hit that like or follow subscribe button and if you need a ghostwriter, definitely find me on writeforyoume to get that ghost writing started. All right, my friends, I hope your story deserves to shine. Make sure you book your discovery. Call today, and I'll see you next week for another episode of Write, Edit and Publish.