Editing is far easier than writing. You can usually look at a finished product and notice its flaws in a single read-through. “This section is a bit redundant”, “the tone in this passage is jarring”, “this paragraph feels overlong”. As long as you have something that's rough but substantive, there's plenty of low hanging fruit for the fixing.

Nobody wants to create flawed work. So, it can be very tempting to try to tackle the task of identifying and fixing flaws in your own work, as you do the work. By just taking extra care, one might avoid making the mistakes they will later need to rectify in the editing process. In most cases, this is a trap that will stifle you.

This is because creating something bad on the first try is vastly easier and faster than creating something good. So, by backspacing every word that doesn’t strike you as correct on a first pass, you severely curtail your ability to complete a first pass at all.

Far more pleasant and effective is the practice of letting go of all standards, and just throwing words onto the page as they occur to you. Picking the best bits out [...]

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.