In the past week, I have learned two writing tips worth sharing.
Tip 1
from Safi Bahcall
FBR is an acronym used by Safi Bahcall which stands for Fast, Bad and wRong. Safi’s writing tip is that you don’t worry about proof-reading, fact-checking or grammar and instead focus solely on getting your thoughts down as quickly as you can.
He explained that when we stop to edit or to Google (there’s no such thing as a “quick search”), we interrupt the flow of our writing. Our train of thought can be derailed or is lost completely.
The first draft is just that – be ok with it being bad and wRong and let the editing and fact-checking be a job you do after the writing is done.
Tip 2
from Neil Gaiman
Neil said he uses a fountain pen when writing the first draft and doesn’t correct those penned pages. Of course, if he did, they would be illegible. He just writes. Again no editing, no fact-checking.
I have tried FBR on my computer. I was pretty good at wRong but Fast and Bad were easily sidestepped with a quickly justified backspace here and there. Which is why Neil’s practice of using a pen rather than a keyboard is such a powerful tool to consider. The ink on paper, not easily correctable, encourages us to push past the idea of creating a perfect first draft and simply to write.
I enjoyed learning these two tips from podcast interviews on The Tim Ferriss Show. Links below
https://tim.blog/2019/03/15/safi-bahcall-loonshots/
https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/
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