Today I’m going back to the subject of the first draft, because I know this is a particularly intimidating part of the process, especially if you’re new to being an author. This is kind of where the rubber hits the road and you actually have to start writing. 

The technique I want to give you today is going to help you to deal with that, it’s going to help you to get words down on paper or on the screen. I developed this method through many years of delivering business writing workshops to companies, to law firms, accounting firms and so on. One of the things I taught in these classes was how to write longer written messages such as reports and opinion letters and such like. 

Then I realized the same method is useful in writing a book, and I have since then used it myself and I also teach it to people I’m coaching through writing their books. This is one of the methods that I give, and so I’m giving it to you today.

I should warn you that it is a low-tech method, and sometimes people are a little bit leery about that. But once they get into it and they realize how useful it is to do it in this low-tech way, most people are won over. 

The tool we’re going to use for this is the lowly Post It™ note, or as I like to refer to them, yellow stickies. As I think I’ve said already, I don’t know quite how I managed to write anything before these things came along. But anyway, we’re going to use yellow stickies for this process. Here is how it works. 

Let’s do this chapter by chapter. Pick a chapter that you think is going to be easy for you because you really know your stuff in this area. Get a pad of yellow stickies. As you go through in your mind all your ideas for this particular chapter, jot down on the yellow stickies just keywords that will remind you of these sub-topics. This goes one step further than the fat outline that I’ve talked about before. 

So now, you’re going to put down on the yellow stickies as many things as you can think that you want to mention in this chapter. Don’t write sentences or anything, just a phrase, a couple of words so that when you look at that yellow sticky, you’ll say, “Oh, yes, I know what I want to say about that,” and it will help you to write it. 

Take as long as you need to do this for each chapter. If you’ve collected notes, either in a physical folder or on your computer, go through them as a source for these ideas. At the end of your thinking, however long that takes, you’ll still have a pile of yellow stickies, but this time they’ll all have things written on them. 

What you want to do now is to lay these out in front of you, either on your desk, or on a pad — somebody told me it’s easier if you put them on a pad of paper because then if you get interrupted before you’re finished, it’s easy to put them away and bring them back again. Or if you prefer, just spread them out on your desk in front of you where you’re working. 

Each one of these yellow sticky notes will remind you of something that you want to write. So, look at everything you’ve written and decide which one you want to talk about first at the beginning of this particular chapter. Take some time, and when you select one you just type, type whatever comes into your head about this topic. Remember, it’s a first draft, it’s going to be edited. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Just get it down there. 

When you’re finished, take that yellow sticky note off your desk, screw it up and throw it in the garbage. This is very satisfying, and it helps you to realize that you actually are getting on with this. Then you just rinse and repeat. 

Decide the next sub-topic and just write what you want to say about that subject. Then take that yellow sticky and you roll that up in a ball and throw that in the garbage. 

This does two things, and this is one of the huge advantages of doing this in a low-tech way with yellow stickies instead of doing it on your screen where you have to keep scrolling to see it. First of all, you can see all your ideas for the chapter all at once in front of you. Next, the act of physically taking the yellow sticky note and throwing it away is satisfying. It helps you to understand that you’re actually doing something. 

And finally, as long as you have one yellow sticky on that page, you still have something to write on this chapter, but when the last one is gone and you have a blank page or you have an empty desk in front of you, you’re done. That chapter, the first draft is done. You can now pat yourself on the back and say, “Well done,” and then simply do the same thing for each chapter with your yellow sticky notes and go through the process with each one.

Some of the people that I have worked with in their business sessions on this have told me that they felt skeptical about it at the beginning because they’re used to doing absolutely everything on their computer. But once they tried it, they found it really was helpful. 

There’s this thing called writer’s block, which I’ll probably address sometime in the future. But if you feel blocked at all, this is a great antidote for writer’s block because you just get everything in front of you and just kind of spew it out. You can concern yourself with sorting it all out later in the editing. 

I hope you’ll take this and use it to actually get started and get those words down.