I sometimes find it difficult to improve a draft. To reorder, restate, and cut things. I think it’s because I mix up several different questions all at once.

• Is this true?
• Have I given a good argument for it? (Or against alternatives?)
• What are the alternatives?
• Is this clear?
• What is a better way to write this?
• Should I break these idea into separate notes?
• Is this interesting, important, or useful?
• If it is, have I explained why?
• How should I start the piece?
• What is the scope of the piece? What should be included or excluded?

Switching between many such questions in a frenzy is a poor way to work. Or, perhaps it’s not a problem for the process to be chaotic, but it should progress in small steps. By switching between all the above questions, things can seem overwhelming, and one can’t take even a single step forward.

How can you break up these things into small, manageable steps? How can you take a draft and start reshaping it slowly-but-surely into something better?

Well, one thing you can do is just go through a draft several times, each time trying to fix just one kind of problem. Maybe the first time, you just cut unnecessary things. Then you can try to rewrite ideas to be shorter. Then you can put things in the proper sequence. Then you can try to improve the points - or perhaps that should come first.

Maybe the really central and first point of revising should be to revise the ideas themselves. To find flaws and gaps. That is, after all, how I have approached writing blog posts. Try to state the problem or starting point clearly, and move from there in an orderly and logical way. I first thought I might avoid this as I write my notes. I thought that sort of writing might constitute an unnecessary and wasteful level of polish. But, perhaps it’s just the opposite, and expressing an idea from beginning to end in a clear and continuous chain of argument is the advantage of writing real prose rather than just bullet-point notes. So, I guess I’d like to revise my idea about sharing public notes.

Instead of sharing my half-baked ideas, the point is to improve them dramatically. To try to get to the crux of the matter, and to put them forward in an extremely clear, crisp, and compelling way. Each time I turn to a note can be an attempt to improve its quality in a fundamental way.

Having said that, this is a costly thing to do, and it means that I may not publish as often as I first thought. Then again, if you begin publishing one compelling note per day this way, that will constitute a dramatic increase in your output.

Real prose at a rate of 300 words per day yields 100k+ words per year. That’s no small thing.

The other side of this is that it means not everything should be a public note. Not everything merits the effort. Some things should remain private. This level of investment in each idea means that you’ll work on only the important ones. That is probably as it should be.