Five Things to Do After You Finish your First Draft.
It’s several weeks after you typed the first word in your manuscript, and you just finished writing the last words 😊followed by: ‘The End’. You are excited. Happy. Drained.
Then you ask yourself: What now?
Indeed what should a writer do after they finish writing their first draft?
1. Take a step back.
You’ve literally been ‘living in’ your manuscript for a long time. Now that you’ve completed it, it’d be wise to take a break from it. Not too long though, maybe a few days, a few weeks (Or months even), depending on whether you have a strict deadline or not. Doing this allows you to gain a fresh perspective and look at the manuscript with fresh eyes when you pick it up again.
2. Write, write some more, then rewrite.
It’s no secret that writing is actually rewriting. Note that, that manuscript you just put the last full stop to is only FIRST DRAFT. This is when the real work on your MS begins. All successful books out there went through various rounds of rewrites, so you must be prepared to take the plunge and so you can also put out a good book.
To do this, you must write, rewrite, draft, redraft, and revise. In essence, self-edit until you are confident your manuscript reads better.
P.S. If you are going the traditional publishing route, you should start querying agents/publishers after this step.
3. Get some help
From a beta reader. Or an editor. Editors lift your MS to the next level by polishing, fishing out holes in your plot/structure, point out inconsistencies etc. After working with an editor, you should also get a proofreader to look for typos, grammatical errors, etc.
4. Publish your Book
Your book is finally ready! 😊There are a lot of options available for self-published authors to sell their books. Publishing platforms like Amazon, IngramSpark, Okadabooks and so on, allow you to upload your book and sell to millions of people worldwide. Research the one that best fits you and hit that publish button.
Alternatively, you can put up your book for sale as a simple PDF if you so wish.
5. Promote your book.
Now that your book is published, you need to get the word out about it. Spread the word on all your social media handles, tell your friends about it, run ads, organise book signing/launch events. Anything to get your book off shelves. (Or your computer😉)
Note: Ideally book promotion should begin before you finish work on your book. I may put up a more comprehensive post about this later.
So… I guess that’s it. 5 steps to take when you finally finish that manuscript. Think I missed something? Let me know in the comments. Assalamu alaykum!😊♥️
