How To Submit Articles Learning To Write A First Draft

It can be so intimidating to think that you need to write a complete article in one day. The mere thought of it makes your body tense up and totally kills any enthusiasm you might have had for writing.
It’s the pressure to create a finished product that often makes us procrastinate with our writing. There is one simple solution that you can learn from professional writers though–learn to write a first draft.
A first draft is the step before writing a finished article. There is no pressure to be perfect or to come up with a genius idea or thought-provoking argument. You are just getting started, just warming up to your topic, even if you don’t know what your topic will be.
If you’ve ever seen a clay sculptor at work, you know that he first of all makes the primary shape. If he’s doing a portrait, he molds the clay into the basic shape of a human head. He may add some rough features in after that. The piece of clay does not resemble anyone in particular at this point–it’s just his “first draft”.
This is how you can work as a writer, and if you learn to write a first draft it will take loads of stress off of you and help you to write more efficiently. Here are a few steps to follow:
1 – First, you need to warm up your fingers and your brain.
This step is imperative–don’t skip it! For 3 minutes just type on a blank sheet of paper. Write down anything that comes into your mind. It doesn’t have to be about anything in particular, and it doesn’t even have to make sense. Just get your fingers moving. Do not edit your typing at all. As much as you can, just type consistently for 3 minutes and turn off the editing part of your brain. Once you’ve finished you will have warmed up for your writing for the day.
2 – As you were typing your warm-up, were there any ideas related to your niche that came up?
No matter how small the idea, look for it. Take that tiny idea and write a few sentences on it. Tell yourself that you don’t need to write an article on it–you are only going to write a few sentences.
When you’re writing, don’t edit. Just write down whatever comes into your head on that specific topic. If you have typos and grammar errors at this point, that’s fine. No one is going to see this, so you don’t need to do any polishing.
3 – Put all your ideas on paper.
After you’ve written a few sentences or a paragraph you can stop for the day, but first be sure that you don’t have anything else left in your mind on this topic. If you don’t have any other ideas, that’s okay.
Many times you may find that at this point you want to continue to write. It’s amazing how your mind can limber up and become more in the mood to write when you take away the pressure of creating a finished piece in one sitting. If you feel like writing more, then go for it.
Here are some tips to keep in mind:
* Don’t try to do any organizational work in this writing session. You’re getting your main ideas down on paper. Editing is necessary at some point, but if you try to do it from the beginning it slows you down and can hamper your writing flow.
* Leave the typos alone and don’t worry about them at this point. This is just a first draft, so it’s okay to have mistakes.
* Relax, because no one is going to see what you’re writing in this first draft.
After you’ve emptied your brain of all the ideas you have for this topic, no matter how insignificant they may be, put the writing away and work on it another day. Little by little you will come up with a finished article. The trick is to work in stages, rather than trying to do the whole thing at once.