The 4,000 Words You Won’t Read
I just finished my podcast episode for… tomorrow.
I’m wrapping up an 8-part series on time and money that I’m pretty sure will be the foundation of the next book I sell. And finding the nut of what I really wanted to say in the final episode was tough.
I originally planned to expand on an article I wrote this time last year. But in writing that script, I realized that the idea I wanted to explore was actually a lot bigger than that. I wrote an initial draft on Thursday. Then I started over again on Friday. And then I reworked that over the weekend and continued into this morning before I was able to record something and edit it.
For the record, I don’t like working that close to the wire.
But this isn’t about the dangers of working at the last minute.
This is about the 4,000 words I wrote that didn’t make it into the final piece.
Over the last 18 months or so, I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with drafting. I am capable of sitting down and writing something publishable (at least by internet standards) in an hour or two. No major edits. Of course, those typically aren’t my best pieces. They might be full of passion. Or they might be good content marketing. But they’re not my best pieces of communication, storytelling, or sensemaking.
The piece I just finished is about time compression & work intensification as a result of trying to squeeze out any unused time in our days. In a workday in which the goal is for every last minute to be productive, throwing out thousands of words can feel like a big waste. It’s like allowing thousands of defective widgets to roll off the assembly line.
This is why time is not money.
Time cannot be wasted. My words aren’t wasted. They’re part of the process, the experience of creating something remarkable.
Speaking of which, I was published in Fast Company last week. I shared a personal essay on learning to work differently since my autism diagnosis. That piece is probably the fourth major rewrite. There were so many different ways it could have gone that I literally wrote four different essays on the same topic, based on the same research and personal experience. Those weren’t wasted words either.
I wonder what your “wasted words” might be. What is the work you do that never sees the light of day? Or, what is the work you have squeezed out of your life because there doesn’t seem to be an economic justification for it?
I think we all might benefit from a few more rough drafts.
