Drafting

Now that you have a topic, ideas to develop, and an organization, you
may begin writing your first draft. The purpose of drafting is to create
the first draft of your paper that you can then begin to revise and perfect.
Do not judge and edit much at this point – that comes later – but do pay
attention to organization.
You don’t need to write your paper in order. The introduction, for
example, often gets written last, after a perfectly clear picture of the
paper’s points has been established. If it makes you feel better, go ahead
and start at the beginning – just don’t spend too much time revising it to
perfection at this point.
If you get bored of one section, skip on and start on the next one
- which is only possible because you already planned your organization
so carefully. If you start slowing down, if you hit a spot that you don’t
really feel like writing, you’re perfectly free to just scribble a note or two
and move on. You can flesh out those parts after doing more research or
thinking or just letting the ideas sit and incubate for a while.
After you’ve written too much (if that ever happens), it’s an easy task
to shave it down to something more appropriate.
In fact, you may write for a while and then start over from scratch,
which sometimes turns out to be a very effective strategy, for two reasons.
In the first place, if you haven’t already freewritten, then writing out your
ideas helps you to develop and clarify them in your mind, which leads to
increased clarity on the page.
It’s like taking apart an engine. Removing and examining all the little
parts that spin and rise and fall provides a more in-depth understanding
of the big picture. But once you have the entire engine in pieces, it might
prove easier to put a new engine into the car than to try to reassemble all
those little springs, bushings and gizmos spread across your garage floor.
In other words, don’t fall too deeply in love with your words at this
point. Don’t feel like you’re deeply committed to them yet. If they’re not
working out for you, dump them and start over.
In the second place, knowing that it’s not your final draft lets you write
more carelessly, as opposed to expending great care on details you may
edit right out of your paper later on. It’s like building a house – don’t paint
the trim or hang the curtains until the walls and roof have been hammered
securely in place.
Taking a draft (anything but a final draft) too seriously sometimes leads
to writer’s block, which is simply the result of trying to do two jobs at
once: create and edit. Editing should be saved till the end of the writing
process, which is a long ways from drafting.