Found a trick that cut my editing time by half in just 2 weeks

I used to spend 3 or 4 hours rewriting the same scene over and over. Then I tried writing a super rough draft first with zero editing. Just got the ideas down on paper no matter how bad they were. After two weeks of that method, my final drafts started coming together in about 1.5 hours instead. The key was silencing my inner critic until the second pass. Anyone else tried something like this that changed their process?

2 comments

2 Comments

barnes.shane3d ago

Writing a messy first draft on purpose is tough because it feels like you're doing it wrong. There's something about lowering the bar that actually lets the good stuff sneak in without you overthinking it. Might be that the toughest part isn't the writing itself, it's all the second guessing that wears you down before you even get started.

taylorb943d ago

Wait... you're saying you actually set out to write a messy first draft on purpose? That's wild to me, @barnes.shane. I've always thought my first drafts were supposed to be clean and polished, so I'd spend hours on a single paragraph getting it perfect. Eventually I'd just burn out and give up on the whole thing. But now I'm wondering if that's the whole problem, you know... like all that pressure to be good from the start just kills any momentum.