You have planned a copywriting session. You sit down and start to write. The words flow and you find that you have written the first paragraph or even the first couple of paragraphs. You feel pleased.
Naturally, you read through what you have written so far. Inevitably, there are some edits, including changes to the grammar, sentence length and so on. You realise that the copy doesn’t quite flow as well as it should do, so you rearrange the text and add a few more sentences which in turn require editing.
You glance at your watch and realise that 45 minutes have passed. You still only have a couple of paragraphs and you are not entirely happy with them. You are tempted to start the whole thing again.
How to get the writing done
The answer is to ‘just write’. Don’t attempt to edit and write at the same time. Writing uses a different part of your brain to the editing part. The Writer within you is creative, free flowing and loves to tell stories. The Editor within you is interested in rules, detail and correctness. You need to have access to The Writer and The Editor – but not at the same time.
My advice is to keep writing until you have finished the first draft of the blog, web page, article, case study, press release or whatever it is that you are working on. Then walk away and take a break. When you return, you can wake up The Editor within you and set them to work.