Separate drafting from editing

As an amateur writer, I often find the process overwhelming. There are so many steps to producing a final result. I hear a lot of advice on letting go of perfectionism, writing bad drafts, revising, editing, and so on and so forth. It's logical advice on paper, for sure, but difficult to follow for me.

One must follow good advice anyway. To tackle the enormous task of writing, I decided to separate drafting from editing once and for all. Even If I'm going to write a simple, short piece like this one, I'll let it "incubate" for a while; a term used in Stephen King's "On Writing" about letting aside story drafts for a while and getting back to them after a few weeks. Then, I'll continue writing or editing the piece in another sitting.

This approach will help me to handle my inertia when starting to write. I'll only write when I have a new idea and edit when I have a draft to finish. I won't try writing, editing, and publishing a piece in one sitting.

This method may slow me down in the short term. But in the long term, if I start writing pieces, stories, and newsletters and organize them to get finished in time, I'll have a solid pipeline of content creation. And I'll write without feeling overwhelmed, which usually leads to dull procrastination.