Editing Your First Draft - How to Find the Point of a Wandering Blog Post
If you wanted to cut through a raw sweet potato, you would need a very sharp knife.
Similarly, if you want to cut through the noise and news flooding the average reader's mind, you need a very sharp point in your online writing.
Pulling this off is harder than it sounds. Like speaking, writing is filled with spontaneity. It is impossible to plan out every sentence before you write. Little discoveries uncovered in the flow of writing are what make the drafting process so darn fun. They are also what make the publishing process so darn difficult.
If you're an intuitive writer like me, you will probably never sit down and say "OK, time to write a post about why productivity is higher in Texas during the winter." Instead, you might be journaling about your vacation in Austin, and then taking notes on a Tim Ferris book, and then talking to your Australian friend about how weird it is that Christmas is hot over there. Then, suddenly, an idea emerges.
My goal with this post is not to remove the delight of discovery. It’s to help you take that strange mystery of first draft writing and manicure a meaningful sharp point. To write effectively is to ask the question: "What am I really trying to say here?"
The answer to that question is your post’s sharp point.
When you fail to find a sharp point and use that sharp point to make edits, you end up with a wandering piece of prose with no focus and, as a result, no fans. When you find one and use it, you can slice out the fluff and carve your insight into the hearts and minds of anyone who sees it.
Let’s get started.
Why sharp points are so important
Creating a sharp point gives your reader context. Without context, humans would be constantly confused.
If you see a sign that says "Sting Rays Here," your reaction will be very different depending on the context. Are you at a beach or in an aquarium? A poster that says "Get an Apple" might be misconstrued if you're at a mall looking for a computer, as opposed to wandering through a New England orchard in the fall.
Context helps us file and organize information in the brain. The easier it is to understand the context, the easier it is to understand new ideas. As Steven Pinker says in his book, Sense of Style "the writer always has to consider the cognitive load on the long-suffering reader."
Pinker's research as a neuroscientist shows that when people read, they are really parsing through grammatical trees word by word. The short-term memory stacks words one by one until it understands the meaning of those words. Once meaning is found, the actual words are ejected from the brain. This is why you can’t recite every line to Lord of The Rings, but you could probably give me the gist of what happens. Language is only a shortcut to meaning. The quicker the brain can go from vocabulary to meaning, the happier it is.
Context accelerates the word to meaning journey, leading to a very happy brain.
Writers who come to nonfiction writing through an interest in poetry or literature (like me) hate this idea. That’s why we talk about sweet potatoes instead. Doing so may grab the reader’s attention more easily, but it’s tempting to get carried away. Every second your reader wonders "where is this going?" is a second they may give up and do something else.
Many writers have heard they need to start with a story. The problem with doing this is that the story doesn't always match the message of the post, or it takes too long for a reader to understand why the story is relevant.
We writers tend to get cute or stupid or romantic with our work. Generally speaking, cleverness is best deployed after the reader has full understanding of your point. After that context is established, your cleverness will be far more effective anyway.
Start with a sharp point, and you have a much better chance at keeping your readers engaged.
Why finding your sharp point is hard to do
The answer is four words: you are too close.
In the first draft, there is usually a big gap between what you *think* you are writing and what you are *actually* writing.
Much of this is due to a fundamental quirk of human thinking called neural adaptation. Neural adaptation is the phenomenon that causes you not to be able to smell your home, notice a fundamental flaw in your spouse's speaking patterns, or see the squash that has been rotting on your kitchen shelf for 10 days straight. Once the brain considers an object not to be a threat, it gives it less attention. The surprising becomes familiar, and life goes on.
What you write isn't just close to you or familiar to you.
It *is* you.
It came from you.
Your words wired themselves directly from your heart to your brain to your fingers to the page. No wonder writing feels so intimate. It's the deepest passions, concerns, and desires of your heart, splayed out via the inadequate conduit of written language. Good luck reading that objectively.
Just like it's impossible to see that 10-day-old moldy squash, it is impossible to read a first draft immediately after writing it. The solution to both these problems? Extract yourself. See the post or produce with fresh eyes.
The easiest (but least convenient) way to do this is time. Screenwriter Taiki Waititi told audiences that he waits a full year after finishing a screenplay before returning to revise it.
If you don't have months to sit on your work, you can cheat the extraction process through three primary means.
One: change the post to a different font. Since the different shape and size of the letters represent a new potential threat (silly brain), you will be forced to look at everything again.
Two: print out the article onto paper, and grab a pen. Editing tangibly forces you to operate in a different medium than on your screen. Screens were born for scanning. Editing is not a scanning-level activity. Use paper to go in depth.
Three: read the piece out loud. This is the single most useful way to extract yourself from a post. Whenever you're reading instead of looking, your ears catch things they otherwise would not. So long, awkward phrases.
Once you've properly extracted yourself from your work. It's possible to find your sharp point, and use it to edit properly.
Finding your sharp point
The first step to turning a stream-of-consciousness draft into a sharp, pointed blog post is to ask the following question:
"What is most of this draft about?"
Odds are, this won’t be what you meant to write about. That’s ok. All writing is discovery, remember? Unless you are working on assignment, lean into the mess.
Let’s pretend you blog about farm life in Missouri. If you're scanning your draft and notice that 12 out of 16 paragraphs focus on the history of chicken egg consumption, and the other four veer down proper barn construction, your sharp point is going to be about chickens, not barns.
However, “chicken eggs” are the topic of your work. They aren’t the sharp point. Writing a topic isn't enough (again, unless you are on assignment).
In order to move from a topic to a point, we move on to step two, another question:
"What do I believe about this topic?"
I stole this question from my friend and fellow author Joel Schwartzberg. His book - Get to the Point - calls this the "I Believe" exercise.
It's a simple process. You start your sentence by saying “I believe” and then fill in the end of the sentence..
For example, "I believe chicken eggs" is not a point. But, "I believe chicken eggs are a fundamental part of the American diet today" is a point.
It's also a pretty boring point.
Which is why you move on to step three, and ask the third question:
"Can this belief be more meaningful?"
You suggested that eggs are a fundamental part of the American diet today. What conclusions can we draw from that? What short-term consequences are there on the body? On the economy? On the chickens? Can you eat eggs 365 days in a row and still be healthy?
Take that metaphorical whetstone and ask question after question to sharpen your point. The more questions you ask, the sharper you get.
One example of a topic transformed into a sharp point is Tim Robinson’s article: Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0. Not only is it obvious what he's writing about, it's clear that he's about to stab me with a new point that will change the way I view a certain topic.
Sharp points are declarative sentences that cannot possibly be misunderstood. They beg the reader to devour the evidence that supports what you believe. For the farm story, your point might be something like: “Every human should eat at least one organic chicken egg per day.”
Ok. I’m interested now.
Once you've followed the path to a sharper point, move on to step four, the final question:
"Do I actually believe this?"
If you don't personally believe what you've concluded, don't use that as your sharp point. Head back to step 2 and start again. It's far better to be critical about sharp points in draft mode than it is to have a piece in the world that you are ashamed of.
Using your sharp point
Once you have the sharp point defined, go back into the weeds. Read over what you have, again, and then for every paragraph, ask the question: Does this support my sharp point?
Let’s move back to the chicken and eggs example. You immediately know that the four paragraphs about barns need to go.
There’s also a long-winded story about your gut health that does not actually support the conclusion that eggs should be an everyday food. It has to go. That study about small farms being bought out by big corporations and giving us lower quality eggs, though, is probably relevant.
What you'll notice during this process is that you aren't just cutting your post. You are noting where your arguments are weak, and where they are strong. You are learning what works and what doesn't. You are firming up your flimsy ideas and bolster the parts that need work.
A sharp point helps clarify the strong and weed out the weak.
Sharp points give you *more* posts, not fewer
Some would argue editing this aggressively wastes too much work. However, even if your goal is to write as many posts as possible (which it probably shouldn’t be), finding sharp points can help you do that.
Let's assume you write the first draft of a post that looks something like this. Each letter corresponds to a paragraph
Topic: Productivity hacks
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
When many writers try to edit these paragraphs for clarity, they might re-order them.
Topic: Productivity hacks
A
C
E
D
F
B
G
This style of editing assumes you have to keep all the ideas that you wrote at the same *time* in the same *place.* That isn’t true.
If you have a better handle on finding a sharp point, you might reach for that wicked delete key, kill all darlings, and trim the post back to it's bare essentials.
Sharp point for Post 1: Too many productivity hacks are a waste of time
A
C
D
G
That four-paragraph version is likely much clearer, but you suffer in the long term. Those other paragraphs are lost forever. What if you didn't have to kill those darlings? What if you could redirect them instead?
Let's imagine that chopped half is about visualization. Why not try pulling those ideas into another post entirely?
**Sharp point for Post 1: Too many productivity hacks are a waste of time**
A
C
D
G
**Topic 2: Visualization**
B
E
F
Now, you have a sharp point on your first post, and topic for your half-finished post.
The same amount of work gave you 2 potential posts.
What’s next? Sharpen the second one, and build in more paragraphs around both posts.
**Sharp point for Post 1: Too many productivity hacks are a waste of time.**
A
C
D
G
H
I
J
K
**Sharp point for Post 2: Visualization never happens as quickly as you want it to.**
B
E
F
L
M
N
O
P
Do you see how pruning your stream-of-consciousness lays the groundwork for other ideas?
Final thoughts: Doesn't a sharp point ruin the fun of writing?
Five years ago, I would have spit on a post like this.
The idea that I needed to sit down and patiently define my topic before writing a single word would have driven me nuts. Can I tell you the truth? Even after a decade of professional writing, I rarely go flawlessly from concept to finished post.
For me, writing almost always starts as an act of discovery. I write to learn. I write to think, on paper, it's the act of writing, as opposed to the act of reading that helps me clarify my thoughts, firm up my beliefs and make points to an audience, and connect different ideas and analogies in my head.
Discovery helps you find a potential sharp point. Editing helps you refine it.
From front to back, publishing a blog post would look something like this:
Write from your stream of consciousness for a first draft
Extract yourself from the material using time, fonts, printing, or reading aloud
Read through the post to discover what the majority of your material is about
Dive deeper by using the “I believe” test to sharpen your point
Use the sharp point to cut or redistribute irrelevant paragraphs
Publish the post
(Note: I’m intentionally omitting the part where you polish the post).
Also, please forgive the accidental acronym in the recap. It’s been a few decades since this particular writer has used the phrase “word up” without a heavy dose of irony.
But hey, if it helps you remember what it takes to create a sharp point, go ahead and word up, word down, and word all around until you get there.
Much love as always <3
-Todd B
