If you've been keeping up with the most recent exercises, you should have a rough draft of a blog post or article close at hand that's based on some fairly in-depth market research, audience identification, and pre-planning.
It's written like you speak, and it's free from any unnecessary jargon.
But, frankly, it may still suck.
Warning: Up to this point, you’ve put a lot of time and effort into preparing and writing this piece. Don’t immediately dismiss it as a “first draft” that needs to be crossed-out, crumpled and chucked.
Many people do just that when they finish their first draft. They look at it with a frown on their faces, notice some typos or a sentence they don’t like very much, and immediately lose hope in the quality of their work. They immediately decide it’s never going to be what they want it to be, so why bother?
Don’t let this be you.
Why do you do it?
Remember, in Chapter 23, you got excited about your topic and your audience. You really believed there were benefits to the reader, even to you if you wrote this piece well. Don’t let that disappear just because the first draft is less than perfect.
Instead, trust your first draft.
This is the result of your in-depth analysis of the purpose for you’re writing in the first place. It’s the method you chose to pass along the right information to your audience so they can take the action you wish them to take. It’s the result of a lot of effort, and chances are very high it’s really, really good.
Really.
You see, your first draft is absolutely saturated with your intuition and – if you wrote it like you speak – your personality. When you immediately rip it apart, those are the first things to go.
And when you're creating content for marketing purposes, those are the very last things you want to remove.
So, does that mean your first draft is perfect? Of course not. Far from it. But perfection is out of reach. You should only be reaching for excellence, and it’s no doubt a lot closer to that level.
How do you do it?
This step's simple.
Restrain yourself from crumpling up and throwing out your first draft.
Restrain yourself from pulling apart all your contractions because your internal editor tells you they're “too casual”.
Restrain yourself from plugging jargon back in because you're secretly afraid your colleagues will think you're dumb.
Basically, do nothing.
Can you do that?
Exercise #22 – Trust Your First Draft
1. Do nothing. (This should be the easiest exercise in the entire book, but it takes willpower.)
2. Read the next chapter.