Two ways to turn your lousy first draft into fundraising that sings

The most important admission any writer can ever make is this: My first draft always, always, always sucks.

It's not just you. It's me. And every other writer in the human race, from the worst writer of all time to the best. The difference between a good writer and a bad one is the good ones know their first drafts suck. They're okay with that, because they know they're going to revise those bad first drafts into great final drafts.

Here's some great help from Jeff Goins, at How to Not Waste Your Words: The Secret to Writing a Crappy but Usable First Draft:

Once you write the terrible first draft, you can write a better second one, and an elegant third one, and so one. But you must start somewhere. As writer Anne Lamott says, "Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts."

Goins suggests two ways to write a bad first draft that's readily improvable:

1. Pantsing. Just dump words on the page. You'll eventually start to find where it needs to go.
   
2. Planning. Start asking and answering questions about the piece you're writing. Maybe build an outline. This way is usually easier than pantsing.
   

My method is usually #2. I start with an outline, then make the outline more and more detailed, until it turns into a piece of writing. Then I revise it more until it's done.

The important thing, though, is to embrace the painful truth that your first draft is bad!

from Future Fundraising Now http://ift.tt/2jeDm5S