The Alchemy of the Rewrite
“Your first draft isn’t an unoriginal idea expressed clearly; it’s an original idea expressed poorly, and it is accompanied by your amorphous dissatisfaction, your awareness of the distance between what it says and what you want it to say. That’s what directs you during rewriting, and that’s one of the things lacking when you start with text genera
... See moreThere is a powerful way to facilitate and speed up this process of rapid association: distill your notes down to their essence. Every idea has an “essence”: the heart and soul of what it is trying to communicate. It might take hundreds of pages and thousands of words to fully explain a complex insight, but there is always a way to convey the core m
... See moreTiago Forte • Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organise Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential
One way of using freewriting to create finished prose: Do a series of freewriting warm-ups. Then, do more focused freewriting about the topic that’s meaningful to you. Cut away what’s not working, arrange the remaining pieces in a provisional order, and make an outline so you know what you have to work with. Write any missing ideas and transitions.
... See moreMark Levy • Accidental Genius
The way to do a piece of writing is three or four times over, never once. For me, the hardest part comes first, getting something—anything—out in front of me. Sometimes in a nervous frenzy I just fling words as if I were flinging mud at a wall. Blurt out, heave out, babble out something—anything—as a first draft. With that, you have achieved a sort
... See moreJohn McPhee • Draft No. 4
A good short story is, among other things, a highly organised system. Its parts feel in connection with one another. There’s very little waste or randomness. Many decisions have been made along the way, by different means, some conscious, some not. It feels fraught with intention, full of direction. It doesn’t necessarily know what it is, but it w... See more
How the work really gets done
