Where to Start? Idea Building & the Zero Draft

Where to start? To serialize the novel or memoir you’re meant to write, you must go through the entire writing process with each installment.

Here’s how I break it down. This may seem familiar, but it’s a different way of approaching it:

• Stage 1: Idea Building

• Stage 2: The Zero Draft

• Stage 3: Revising (for content)

• Stage 4: Editing (for style)

• Stage 5: Proofreading (your best friend)

I want to give you evidence that the writing process I’m about to share produces results—if that’s what you’re after. I wrote a memoir, landed a powerhouse agent, and got a generous book deal with a major publishing house in under seven months. Seven months.

Granted, I’d been writing for twenty years, and it wasn’t my first book (several very bad nove…