“The key to writing is rewriting.” I heard this phrase often when my wife was teaching our kids how to write. It might have influenced me more than our kids. Its importance extends beyond writing.
The main idea behind the phrase is that the first draft isn’t going to be the final paper. It will get better with each revision. To be revised, though, you need an initial draft. For many of us, this is the hardest step.
We want it to be perfect.
We are afraid it won’t be perfect.
We stall until we have it fully formed in our mind.
Or until time runs out and we have to write it regardless of how good or bad it is.
It is so much easier to simply accept imperfection and write a crappy first draft.
Then rewrite it.
And rewrite it again.
And rewrite it again.
Until the paper is done.
The same fears and principles are at play in other endeavors.
We need a perfect plan before we begin.
We won’t start because we are afraid we will fail.
Fear. Fear. Fear.
Stall. Stall. Stall.
Is this how we want to live our lives? Not me.
We can’t come up with a perfect plan. It’s impossible. We will need to adjust any plan we create to what we learn as we go.
And, of course, we are going to fail. We won’t be very good when we start. We must accept that.
Accept it. Be OK with it. And start.
It is much easier to get better once we have started.
We will see what we are good at and what we aren’t, what we need to learn and what we don’t, where we need to focus and what we can ignore.
The imagined fears become concrete obstacles we can deal with. They are almost always much smaller than we thought.
We gain a little confidence each time we try again.
But for all of these things to become true, we have to start.
We have to get our initial, crappy attempt out into the real world so we can begin to improve it.
The key to writing is rewriting.
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Thank you!
Yeah, what he said.
One of the most valuable skills anyone can develop in life is Midcourse Correction. The old military quote “No plan survives contact with the enemy” still holds true.
I cannot plan for every contingency; they are infinite. So I simply must leap into the stream at the best spot I can see at this moment, then deal with what I encounter. It’s not a “blind leap”, but it acknowledges that my perspective is limited.