Writing a first draft requires writing down the words as they flow out of the brain. No checks. No balances. Only natural tweaks and refinements. JUST LET GO! And then you can take the time to pull out all the weeds as you develop the second draft.

I have a check list that I go through of all these little nasty zingers that pull the power away from what I’m trying to say. Here they are - in no particular order:

• words that end in ing

• words that end in ly

• there

• here

• it was (it)

• down into (down)

• off over (off)

• back away

• up toward

• as

• looking

• glancing

• heading

• turning/turned

• went

• began

• and

• just

• only

Take for example a simple sentence like this, “Mostly he was thinking about what his father had said about his future.” “Was thinking” is a passive approach. If I change that to “Mostly he thought about what his father had said about his future”, it’s still not a great sentence, but improved. My process is to go through every chapter once for each of these naughty words. Some of them I can’t change - I can’t take the ing off spring for example. Some of them cause a struggle to find a way around. Some of them go fast. Give it a try. Expose some of your writing to these little uglies.

Hopefully after I go through each chapter 19 times I can weed out the majority of these weaklings and find a bunch of typos and other gotchas along the way. It always amazes me how much better the writing is after I go through this process.