Write Better Content Right Now | Part 2: Save the Editing for Later

Part 2: Save the Editing for Later

This is part two of a four-part series on creating better marketing content right now. Entrepreneurs and companies often come to content marketers like me when they need polished, professional marketing content. But not everyone has the budget or resources for a full content strategy. In these posts, I want to help you see that you can write great content, and you can do it now. Want to start at the beginning? Check out Part 1: Start Writing. Now.

Okay, so you sit down in front of your computer, and now you’re staring at a blank Word Doc (or Google Doc. We all love opensource around here). You start typing. You stop typing. You delete everything you just typed. You start typing again. You stop typing again… Sound familiar?

How are you going to get anything done when you can’t even get started?

Well, believe it or not, every time you stop typing and delete everything, you’re not writing. That’s right, no matter how many times you typed that first sentence, as long as you were deleting it, you weren’t writing — you were editing.

I know you loved that great “practice makes perfect” cliché in part one, so I’m gonna come at you with another one. We’re each our own worst critic. If you let your inner critic tell you “That’s not good enough,” and you let your inner editor pick your words apart before you even get them out… you’re not writing.

When you first sit down to write a blog, an ad, a page for your site, a product description, or anything else — just write. If you have trouble turning off your inner editor, try one of these tips.

Go old school.

Write your first draft out by hand. It’s a lot harder to edit your words when you can’t delete them. As you write, don’t think about how your writing sounds or how the end product will look. Don’t think about keywords or optimization. Just write. Give yourself 20 minutes, and just write without correcting yourself.

Maintain the momentum

Whether you’re writing longhand or on your laptop, if you get stuck on a word, skip it. I do this a lot when I’m starting a project. Before I come back and edit, my first draft might look a lot like:

Content marketing is the practice of storytelling. Your story is your strength. Your strength is in your story. Think of an emotion you want to _____. You can say “you’ll love my products!” until you’re blue in the face, but you won’t convince anyone. On the other hand, if you show people that your products fill a ______ in their life, they’ll find that love all on their own.  

I want you to notice a couple of things about this very unpolished paragraph. First, let’s look at the second and third sentences. “Your story is your strength. Your strength is in your story.” When I was developing Valkyrie Marketing’s tagline, I went through a bunch of iterations before I settled on “Your strength is in your story.” When I’m writing a piece of web content for my site, I might write a variation of my tagline into the copy. When I’m writing, I don’t need to decide which one I like best. I just need to write, and sometimes that means repeating myself. And that’s okay. That’s what editing is for!

Next, let’s look at those blank spaces. I wasn’t writing a Mad Lib, but I did have a couple of instances when I felt stuck on a word. Instead of letting myself get bogged down in figuring out the best word choice, I skipped it. I use this trick a lot when I know that the “perfect” word is on the tip of my brain, but I can’t quite reach it. Then, when I come back to edit, the blank space is waiting for me. I usually find the word I was searching for pretty quickly, or I take some time to search through Thesaurus.com or RelatedWords.org for a fit.

Take a break. Walk away. Really. Go.

Save the editing for later. Give yourself time to get a full draft written. Then, when you’ve completed that draft, go take a walk. Get a cup of coffee. Talk to a customer. Play with your dog… Whatever you do, don’t look at that piece of writing for at least a couple of hours, if not a day or two.

Once you’ve gotten a sufficient amount of time away from the screen, you can come back and edit. Then you can move on to the tips in part three, in which I’ll talk about two of my favorite ways to write better content: mastering the active voice and ditching throw-away words.

Ready to keep going? Read Part 3: Get Active. Ditch Throw-Away Words.