Writing FAST - Jeff Bollow 2012

Missing and redundant ideas
Inspect what you have
Strengthen

Now don’t forget, we’re still only inspecting.

Don’t get too carried away trying to find every little thing that’s wrong, and every little detail that’s out of place. Stay focused on the ideas you’re getting across. Trying to do it all at once is too much. It’s information overload. Keep it simple.

There’s only one other thing I want you to look for while you’re inspecting. And this one comes naturally:

What’s missing, and what’s redundant.

Two sides of the same coin.

As you read, the major problems will jump out at you. Whole pieces of your idea will be missing! You raced through this thing, and some ideas you thought were there, simply aren’t.

Or — and this happened to me continuously as I was writing this book — you discover new ideas and new points you didn’t originally know about your subject when you started. Well, now that you know them, they’re missing, too.

On the flip side is redundancy. Ideas that were so important, you repeated them twice. Or three times. Or twenty.

This isn’t intentional repetition, like when I say “all writing is communication.” I repeat that to drive home the point.

Instead, “redundancy” is when you get stuck, and repeat yourself because can’t think of anything else to say.

It happens for hundreds of reasons: Maybe your Focus Plan wasn’t clear enough. Or you wrote on different days (and forgot you wrote it earlier). Or it felt “new” in a different context.

It’s natural. And to write fast, it’s part of the process.

That’s how you write FAST. You pour it all that onto the page. And when you get here, you notice it. And then you make notes. You identify it. And then you keep moving.

As long as you see it, you’re ready to make your list.