Three steps to writing well

Rarely does a writer produce a perfect press release, manuscript or whatever on the first try. The task ideally should be divided into three steps: writing, rewriting, and polishing.

1. Writing - most professional writers go through a minimum of three drafts. The first is this initial 'go with the flow' draft where the words come tumbling out.

When you sit down to write, let the words flow freely. Don't worry about style, syntax, punctuation, or typos - just write. You can always go back and fix it later.

By letting it all out, you build momentum and overcome inhibitions that block your ability to write and think.

2. Rewriting - in the second draft, the rewriting step, you take a critical look at what you've written. You edit for organisation, logic, content, and persuasiveness.

Using your computer, you add, delete, and rearrange paragraphs. You rewrite jumbled passages to make them clear.

3. Polishing - in the third draft, you give your prose a final polishing by editing for style, syntax, spelling, and punctuation.

This is the step where you worry about things like consistency in numbers, units of measure, equations, symbols, abbreviations and capitalisation.