My first real job as a writer was as a journalist for The New Indian Express.
I was straight out of college and was basically an idiot with no work exposure.
I vividly remember the first draft of the first ever story I wrote.
My first ‘assignment’ was to report on a stray dog menace in the city.
Now don’t laugh, people were getting their asses bitten by strays and it was up to me and my journalistic skills (LOL) to bring this to the light.
I thought I had written a masterpiece.
My editor had different thoughts.
After spending a couple minutes on my draft, he called me over to his place to show me his edits.
Believe me, 90% of the draft was marked in red underlining and strikethroughs.
It was like left-over blood after a cold-blooded murder.
And right there, I learnt an important lesson.
Writing sucks, bigtime.
But my editor also taught me another valuable lesson.
Re-writing is better than writing.
Doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner, intermediate or a pro – your writing is going to suck 9 out of 10 times.
If you show me a writer who can pull off amazing stuff in the first draft, then I’ll gladly pay them money to learn from him or her.
But alas, I haven’t met such a writer yet.
And for good reason.
Because every good writer knows the value of re-writing and editing.
If you spend a lot of time reading others’ stuff and writing your own stuff, you’d be able to easily pick the ones which weren’t taken past their first drafts (that writer is a lazy bum) and the ones that were re-worked meticulously.
So here’s a lesson for today:
Don’t care about how good your first drafts are.
I’ve got a simple rule: vomit out the first draft. Clean up the mess in the second, third, fourth and subsequent drafts.
There’s literally no downside to re-write and edit your drafts multiple times before you hit that ‘send’ button.
But here’s the thing. Many people may overdo this.
So much that they end up never publishing or getting their writing out in the real world.
They’re usually chronic perfectionists.
A trick I use to avoid being an ass of a perfectionist is to set a deadline and accommodate as many revisions as possible within that timeframe.
This way, I can assure myself of the good work that I’ve put into my drafts and get my writing out there.
That’s it for today.
PS.
I’m starting a new section on my blog that has nothing to do with writing or advertising but everything to do with stuff other than that (at least, I’ll try). So watch out for it. I’m thinking of at least one blog a month. Oh, and by the way, the section is called Etc which you'd be able to find easily on my site.
See you soon in another blog:)
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