7 Steps to Better Writing - Charles Maxwell 2020

Persist
Step 4 – Organize

As you work through your project, it is normal to feel your ideas are trite or worthless. Many writers experience such doubts.

Roger Angell described, in a forward to the seminal writing guide The Elements of Style, how E. B. White—a successful writer for The New Yorker magazine—often felt his writing was inadequate and struggled to compose interesting articles. His solution was to persist.^[8]

William Stafford offered advice for when you have a low opinion of your work. He said, “Lower your standards, and keep writing.”^[9]

This is also true of the organizing phase. Keep working. Later sections of this book discuss how to fix any problems if they exist in your first draft. For now, get your thoughts in order as best you can.