Module 1: Starting and Writing Your Book

Week 8: Moving towards your final draft

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Module 1 Week 8 - Greetings! [ 1:59 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

LESSON SUMMARY

Well hooray! It’s the final week of your module. And congratulations for making it here.

You’ve been on a long journey so far. You’ve identified the purpose of your book, made an outline for your book and built up a regular writing practice. You’ve learned what blocks your progress and how to use targets and deadlines to keep you moving forward. You’ve experimented with different ideas to expand your creative process and, finally, you have started to share your book by letting others read it and offer you feedback.

Now, it’s time to start thinking about what you will need to do in order to complete your project, and make it ready to be received by the rest of the world.

The title of this week’s lesson is “Moving Towards” your final draft, not “Finishing” your final draft. There is no assumption that, over the period of an 8-week course, you would be able to finish a final draft of a book. In fact, even though last week we spoke about what to do when you have finished your second draft, if you are anywhere near completion of your first draft at this point, that would be a much more reasonable expectation.

If right now, you were to be at the point of completing your final draft, and you had not yet started building your promotional platform, you are not yet ready to release your book to the world! Preparing your platform must be done even before you prepare the physical properties of your book for publication (i.e., layout, cover design, etc). That is why Module 2 is “Pre-Publication Marketing Musts” and it is not until Module 3 that we discuss “Preparing for Publication” (implying self-publication).

This week, we will be exploring the necessary components of moving towards your final draft. To do this, you will be taking a few steps back from your book, so you can get a metaview of the complete project, rather than merely working through the process of writing.

In this week’s lesson you will…

1. Create a check list of things that need finishing up
2. Prepare to embark on promotional platform building
3. Decide whether to approach a publisher or to go self-published
4. Create a timeline for your project completion
5. Re-assess and re-affirm the purpose of your book (reflecting back to Week 1), and see how much has changed or stayed the same during the process of your writing.

So when you’re ready to go, let’s get start on Spirit Authors Module 1 Week 8, “Moving Towards Your Final Draft.”

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