What is the correct order of the four tasks you need to complete after you have finished your first draft?

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Writers start with a blank page or screen and end with a final product. What happens between those points varies from person to person, but there is definitely a process that every writer uses. We call this the writing process. In the exact center of the writing process is drafting. This mysterious part of the process is where the writing gets done, as if by magic, except it’s not magic at all. Having a plan for drafting will help you avoid road blocks and take unnecessary detours.

A good analogy for the writing process is frying an egg. You follow a process when you fry an egg. You gather your materials (frying pan, butter, egg, spatula, cooking element), you start the process (grease and heat the pan, crack the egg into the pan), you watch the egg cook (apply variation for runny egg, or over-easy egg, or over-hard egg), you use the spatula to remove the egg from the cooking surface and place it on a plate (or atop a burger). You turn off the heat and put the cooking materials into a sink for cleaning. Voila! Fried egg.

The actual cooking of the egg is the most passive part of the process and, ironically, is analogous to the most active part of the writing process, drafting.

Now let’s say you forget to turn on the heat. Or let’s say you go through the entire process but apply the heat at the end, after you’ve removed the egg from the pan. You will end up with an uncooked egg.

A process dictates that certain things happen in a certain order. If they don’t, the process breaks down and the task is not completed. Traditionally, the writing process is divided into 5 parts:

1. Prewriting
2. Planning/Outlining
3. Drafting
4. Revising
5. Editing

We can simplify this 5-part process into 3 parts:

1. Prewriting (gathering information/reading/research and planning/outlining)
2. Writing (drafting)
3. Postwriting (revising/editing)

Drafting is impossible if you don’t have material to work with. Some people spend a great deal of time front-loading the process, gathering a lot of material through prewriting or research or making a formal outline or just plain thinking. I like to take some notes, however, as the human memory is a slippery thing.

Some people must get everything in line before putting that first word down. This works sometimes, but it can lead to procrastination. Most of what you write will change through revising and editing, so it’s advisable to just get started. Prewriting strategies can help you get ideas down to start. Later, when you revise, you can refine them, add to them, or delete them.

Revising and editing is impossible to do before you have a draft. And if you try to revise and edit while you are drafting, you will slow to a crawl. You will not gain quality. You will merely waste precious time. Everything in its place. When you draft, draft. When you revise, revise. When you edit, edit.

The writing process is iterative and messy with lots of back and forth. We prewrite and plan and draft and realize we need to do more research so we go back and research some more and then draft some more and then develop more notes for the next section and on and on. It’s two steps forward, one step back, two steps forward, one step back, until the draft is done.

If you try to tackle the parts of the writing process as independently as possible, you will have much greater success. Save the multitasking for other activities. While writing, focus on the process.

So, what happens when you draft? How do we get from that blank page to a completed draft, what Anne Lamott calls “Shitty first drafts”? Everyone writes bad first drafts. Your first draft is merely raw material. You need a draft if you’re going to polish it into something beautiful. It takes time and pressure to turn coal into a diamond.

Some writers start with an elaborate written plan. Others start with a bit of reading and a few notes. Some simply think. Whatever you do to gather information, there are things you can do to get from the blank page to a completed first draft. And a couple of things not to do.

Write long

Write more than you will need. At first, you don’t really know what you will need, so put everything in. And then put some more in. You will never exhaust a topic, no matter how specific. You could write a dissertation about a speck of dust and reach thousands of pages and still have much to say. First look at it under a microscope. Then look at it with a telescope. Then look at it in the dark, and then in the bright of day. You get the idea.

Stephen King says about revising: “2nd Draft = 1st Draft — 10%.” What he implies here is that there is material to cut from the first draft. While drafting, don’t worry about what to put in. If in doubt, put it in. Write long. You can always take it out later.

Create subheadings to tackle your draft

One way to tackle a draft is to create subheadings. Fill in the details under the subheading that you want to write about now. It doesn’t matter what order you write your draft in. It’s all going to change anyway when you revise. If you don’t know a detail, make brackets with a note to yourself, something like [FILL IN THIS DETAIL LATER]. You can tackle that task later during revising. Once you have completed a subheading, move on to the next one you want to write about. Keep moving forward.

Be specific

If you stall while drafting, offer a specific detail. Specific details are only specific in relation to other details. For instance, the word “shoe” seems specific enough. But in comparison with “Nike high tops” or “hiking boots” the word “shoe” is a general word. In comparison with the word “footwear,” the word “shoe” is specific. There are many kinds of “footwear” including socks, sandals, slippers, high heels, “et cetera et cetera et cetera.”

Paradoxically, it is easier to write about extremely specific ideas than to write about generalities. For example, if you were asked to write about freedom or justice, what would you say? There is so much to say about each of them. Where do you start? What kind of “freedom” are we talking about? “Justice” for whom, and in what circumstances?

On the other hand, if you were asked to write about what it’s like to be grounded, or about how it felt when a cheater got a better grade on an assignment than you did, or about the jerk who got the promotion you were aiming for, I bet you would have no trouble filling pages with specific details.

Give examples

Give specific examples or mini-narratives. All stories are made up of smaller stories woven together. Your perspective is valuable and unique, so provide that perspective to your audience. Back to our example about freedom and justice, provide examples when you exercised your freedom the most or when our freedom was curtailed. Provide examples of an injustice you suffered. Provide as many examples in your draft as possible. Don’t choose. Provide them all. When drafting, keep moving forward.

Keep moving forward

Drafting is a bit like prewriting. You want to keep moving forward as much as possible. Don’t look back and edit. It’s not the time for that. You may wish to look at the last sentence you wrote to anchor yourself for knowing how to move forward. But don’t tinker with what you just wrote. Once the dust has settled a bit from your writing storm, you can go back to revise and edit. For now, keep moving forward and filling those pages.

Remember those examples? William Zinsser says to collect many ideas. That’s a prewriting technique. But it’s also a drafting technique. Writing out those ideas, those mini-stories, is valuable for determining exactly what the best material is for your writing.

Consider this analogy. You must choose two good peaches to bake a pie. One bin has two peaches in it. One bin has 10 peaches in it. Which do you choose? Chances are that two peaches in the 10-peach-bin are better than the only two peaches in the two-peach-bin. What you want to do is to choose the best damn peaches, period.

If you dig up 10 examples for your writing, and use the two best examples, then you are increasing the quality of your work. If you only have two examples to choose from, how do you know they are any good?

Don’t fill your work with rotten peaches.

Some things not to do while drafting

Along with not choosing rotten peaches, avoid the following while drafting:

• Don’t revise and edit along the way.
• Don’t worry about the title yet.
• Don’t worry about the introduction yet — it will change.

Writing is a discovery process. Once you discover what your main point is through drafting, you’ll be able to write an introduction worthy of your subject matter. It never fails, when I’ve spent days and weeks preparing the perfect introduction, only to come upon a writing deadline and have to rush my draft, I must inevitably change my well-crafted introduction to match my draft. A draft never comes out exactly the way you think it will.

So that’s it. When you are ready to draft, write long, fill out subheadings, give specific details and examples, and keep moving forward. Before you know it, you’ll have your own shitty first draft. And then the fun can truly begin. Happy drafting!