Passion, then polishDarlings, writing, especially great writing, is more about the edit than the draft.

In the edit, lies gold.

See, there are two personalities in the writing room – the writer and the editor.

Don’t let them both sit down to the table at the same time.

Write first. Get all your fat, juicy ideas on the page, even if you use the same verb a hundred times and have atrocious grammar. Get the message down, then edit.

In the edit, be ruthless. Cut the fat. Use powerful verbs. Delete 50% of your ‘I’s’. Look for redundancy.

Tighten it up, make it shine, but don’t try to do that while you’re writing or you’ll curtail the potency of your content.

Passion, then polish.