Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

13‘Cross Out the Wrong Words’

“Writing is easy,” said Mark Twain. “All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.”

Revisiting a first draft to rework and rewrite it doesn't sound like much fun, does it? It sounds like drudgery and tedium, like alphabetizing canned goods.

But it's not really, because there's a kind of freedom in it. You've already done the hard part of setting down the words. Now comes the easier (and, for some, less anxiety-inducing) part of distilling it to its essence—or, crossing out the wrong words and the unnecessary words, and sometimes finding better ones to use.

Revising is my favorite part of writing—because it's when I (or you!) do the creative, fun part of writing. To me the first draft feels more like pure ball-and-chain drudgery. The editing is where you get to make some merry.

I'm not talking here about having someone else edit your work, by the way. That comes later. First, you need to take a first pass at shaping your own work—essentially rewriting much of it.

There are two approaches to self-editing:

1. Developmental editing, which I call editing by chainsaw. Here's where you look at the big picture.
2. Line editing, which I call editing by surgical tools. Here's where you look at paragraph and sentence flow, word choice, usage, and so on.

I like to use both on the same piece, first one…and then the other.

Editing by chainsaw. First, ignore the grammar and specific words you've used, and focus on the bigger stuff.

• State your key idea as clearly ...