What’s the most important part of your writing process?
Scrapping!
Brutally and rigorously removing everything that isn’t absolutely necessary.
I always knew that in my mind.
But did I do it?
Well, I thought I did, until I wrote a piece that came out three times longer than the client requested.
I turned pale.
How was I going to get it from 2200 to 700 words without ruining everything? How could I cut out two-thirds of the text and still present sufficient info?
For a while, I contemplated rewriting the piece from scratch. But, no, this was my punishment for letting myself get carried away.
It was also a great chance to prove to myself I was up to the challenge.
Here's what I did:
First, I jotted down the key message and the purpose of the article.
Then I read each section. If it didn’t serve the key message or the purpose - scrap.
When I was done, I did it again. And again until every remaining section was necessary to drive the message across.
Then I read every single sentence. If it didn’t present anything new - scrap.
I repeated this till every sentence was unique and contained valuable info.
Then I read each word. If the sentence kept its meaning without it - scrap.
I went over the text till I couldn’t find anything more to remove.
Did I meet my goal? You bet I did!
After submitting the article, I got this message from the client: “Great article! Amazing work! So much valuable data”.
None of this “.. just a little tweak…” or “.. I added some suggestions….” or “... maybe we should add….” that I usually get.
It was a painful, but worthwhile lesson! And the best part: I still have enough content to write a second piece.
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