Don't hold back for the first draft!

You may want to get everything perfect the first time round but this won't happen. Don't worry about it like I did - it's easy to go back and change things once you've got the first draft down because then you've got the bulk of the story and you're just tweaking it, rather than coming up with the new words to move the story along.

I spent years being too scared to write the stories I wanted to write and use the names I wanted to use in case they weren't "right" in the end, even if it was just for stories I was writing for fun, for only me (and a few friends, perhaps) to see. I was scared to use lyrics from songs, or film titles or brand names in case I'd have to get rid of them at the end. Then I realised, why not just use them for now? There's no point spending days worrying about using a real town's name when a) it'll end up being changed in the end anyway and b) you should be getting on with the actual writing rather than fussing over little details. That comes with revision, another thing I've always been terrified but it's not as scary as I thought. That'll come in another post.

The gist of this post is: get the words down, whatever they are, and worry about the changes later. Especially if it's an idea you're only writing for yourself. I recently finished revising a book I wrote about eighteen months ago and it was one I didn't hold back on at all - I just wrote what I wanted because I had no want for it to ever be published, and I finished writing it in two weeks. It has ended up being the favourite of the books I've written, mostly because I had such fun writing it. Writing shouldn't be a chore, it should be a release, an escape. So don't hold back.

Lydia