A few hours or days after the fastwriting step, read through your draft quickly to get a sense of what you’ve written. By allowing time between fastwriting and surveying, your reading will be less subjective—much more objective and reader-like, less owner-like.
Now, read through the draft again, but this time ask yourself what ideas dominate the draft, what ideas can link with others? Many writers call the first scribbled draft a zero-base draft because its ideas lead directly to the first draft. Thus, the zero-base draft is an idea draft. Surveying helps you begin to organize and group your written ideas into an intelligible whole.
As you survey your draft for potential, use a yellow highlighter to underline ideas ...
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