Draft No. 0

I don't know a better tool to start writing than a draft zero. In a draft zero you start to write about whatever comes to your mind without having any filter. Nobody but you will ever read this draft. But it's always easier to edit something than to start from scratch. The idea behind a draft zero is to get the first version down as fast as possible. You can worry about quality or theme later.

When I start writing my draft zero, I never know what topic I will end up with. I might have some idea I want to explore, only to realise after three sentences that it is, in fact, not that interesting. Then I start to write about why I thought it to be interesting or go into a completely different direction. I'm repeating this until I find a thread to follow.

Even though this is the fastest way I know to start writing, it can still take quite a long time. This makes it a bit unwieldy for daily blogging. If I need 30 minutes to find a thread worth following, it's almost impossible to finish the post in one hour (which is the time I'm targeting and exceeding everyday).

There's one thing that helps though. On some days, I knew what I wanted to write about the evening before. Whenever this was the case, it took me less than five minutes to find the thread I wanted to follow. And I think it's time to explore this shortcut systematically.