Hit publish: how to make quick decisions as a writer
As a writer, you’re constantly faced with decisions.
Whether to replace a word with a synonym.
Whether to use a comma or a period.
On the micro level, you’re focusing on diction and sentence structure.
Once you've written a few paragraphs or a whole piece, you have macro decisions to make.
What to cut. What to keep.
Improving overall cohesion and flow.
Choosing a title.
You might write the first draft in 10 minutes and then spend a whole day making these decisions.
Worse, you get bogged down with decisions before you finish your first draft.
The goal is to publish quickly.
Of course, this doesn’t have to be your goal for writing.
But that is the goal of this advice.
Vomit on the blank page
“Vomit” is a gross word, I know.
It doesn’t have to be pretty. Just get it out. All of it. As fast as you can.
The first decision most writers make is deciding which thoughts in their brain they want to bring into the world as words.
Remove this decision from your writing process.
It’s a filter. And it’s not helpful. It only decreases your output and prevents brilliant ideas from ever being born into lexical bodies.
You’re not editing yet. You don’t need to make any decisions. Your only responsibility at the very beginning of the writing process is to let the words flow out of your consciousness.
Let others edit for you
There are multiple reasons to let others edit your writing.
First, you get out of the worst part of the writing process.
I don’t know if this is every writer's experience, but for me, editing is awful. I enjoy the raw creation. It's cathartic. Editing feels like clipping my nails too close to the skin.
Second, you need another point of view.
Some writers say they write for themselves. I agree with this, to an extent. There are certain forms of writing, like journaling, that aren’t usually meant to be read by others.
But assuming that you have written something and you intend for others to read it and, more, to enjoy it, then it is helpful to get feedback from someone other than yourself before publishing.
Almost every time that I’ve gotten feedback from a third-party editor, they’ve pointed out an area for improvement that I wouldn’t have found on my own.
As a writer, you can’t possibly be objective with regard to your own writing. And the more you read it over and over, editing on your own, the more you lose the “fresh eyes” needed to make improvements that will appear obvious to someone reading it for the first time.
I find my editors on Fiverr. You can also use AI for editing.
Resist the urge to over-edit
There’s a quote that I paste at the top of my manuscripts before I start to edit:
"When I write...I rarely do second drafts. I’ll do a second draft just to clean up typos and maybe a little shift in the structure, but I’ve always been attracted to the way that people who don’t know how to draw, draw. Their energy is so direct between the pencil and the paper and it’s not cluttered with bullshit style. I feel the more drafts you put writing through, the more you repainted the same painting, all the blood was taken out. It no longer had life in it. Anyway, I wrote this thing really fast."
I want to emphasize this part: “The more drafts you put writing through, the more you repainted the same painting, all the blood was taken out. It no longer had life in it.”
If you’re stuck on a decision, let’s say you’re deciding whether to change a specific word to a different word, I’ve found that it’s usually best to leave the original word.
Of course, this is not always the case. Some words need to be changed.
But there’s a magical thread woven through a piece of writing the first time it’s written. You were able to weave that thread through the first time because you were still in the midst of the original moment of inspiration.
When you’re editing, you’re sitting at your desk, probably bored, out of touch with the muse that guided your hand holding the needle during the original weaving.
Trust your muse more than the sterile rules of some supposed style.
Balance between speed and quality
If there are spelling and grammar mistakes in your writing, you don't want to be moving so fast that you don't fix these mistakes.
You also don't want to miss an opportunity to change a word to a better synonym. Or make a quick improvement to sentence structure.
Look for the low-hanging fruit.
What are the quick, easy changes that will make a big impact on the overall quality of the piece?
Make those changes and move on.
Perfect is the enemy of good
Don't worry about getting to 100% perfect.
Just get to 80% good.
Especially if you're just writing a blog post, a tweet, or something that can be edited later.
If you're writing a book that's going to be published, you might want to double and triple-check.
But assuming you're writing something that isn't going to be cemented in stone and you can edit it or create a different version of it later, 80% is good enough.
The alternative is that you get stuck somewhere between 80% and 100% and you end up publishing nothing.
Hit the publish button
What’s the worst that can happen?
If you’re the U.S. President or the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, you might have to be careful about what you say for political or legal reasons.
Otherwise, let it rip.
Conclusion
The goal is to be able to make quick decisions on what you’ve already written, publish it, and then move on to the next thing you want to write.
If you don’t want to be prolific, then you don’t need to make quick decisions.
But assuming you want to write as much as you possibly can, or you're like me and you constantly have more ideas than your brain can contain, then the ability to make decisions and move on is helpful to increase the rate at which you’re publishing (and also to get more of that “release” feeling when you put something out into the world).
Amen. You’re only ever one essay away from changing your life forever.