Write it twice

Almost every piece of bad writing I have edited had the same cause. It was not carelessness or a thin vocabulary. It was that the writer sent the first draft, having mistaken it for the piece.

A first draft is not a worse version of the finished thing. It is a different object with a different job. Its job is to tell you what you actually think, which you will not know until you have written several hundred words finding out.

Draft one: no reader

Write it as though nobody will read it, because nobody will. Do not stop to find the right word, do not check a fact, do not reorder a paragraph. If a sentence resists, write something like this in brackets and keep moving.

Speed matters here, not because speed is a virtue, but because stopping lets the editing mind in, and the editing mind will happily spend an hour on an opening line you are going to delete anyway.

Then leave it

A night is ideal. An hour is enough. The gap exists so you stop remembering what you meant and start reading what you wrote. Those two things are much further apart than they feel.

You cannot edit and write at the same time for the same reason you cannot pour and drink from the same glass.

Draft two: only a reader

Now be ruthless, in this order.

• Cut the run-up. The real beginning is usually the third paragraph. Everything before it was you clearing your throat.
• Cut the summary of what you are about to say. Just say it.
• Find every sentence you enjoyed writing and check whether it is doing any work. Half will not be.
• Read it aloud. Every place you stumble is a place the reader will stumble, and your mouth notices things your eye forgives.

Two drafts is usually enough. Three is occasionally warranted. Beyond that you are no longer improving it, you are just moving furniture around a room you are afraid to leave.