If a Draft Doesn’t Meet This One Condition, I Scrap It
This painful habit has drastically improved my writing quality
Pouring time, effort, and love into an article and having to Ctrl+A and Delete is more painful than giving birth or getting hit in the nuts.
But it’s necessary. As a writer, shipping a piece I’m ultra-iffy about feels like a betrayal to my craft and credo. So I gulp down the tears and scrap them — just now, after 15 minutes of uncomfortably squirming in my chair, I pulled the plug on one.
There’s only one condition, a question to be accurate that determines the fate of a draft. It’s like Alibaba’s cave, only the drafts that say “Open sesame” may pass.
Am I Providing Genuine and Actionable Value?
Yes, that’s it. Unless the answer is a firm yes, the draft’s going to the gallows.
I believe that value forms the soul of an article.
If my reader is going to be spending some of their valuable minutes on my article, the least I can do is provide them with something to take away.
Retching a bunch of vague thoughts or stitching together a few glib cliches leads to soulless zombie articles. There’s enough of them on the…
