Cut the Fluff is a weekly newsletter that will help you become a confident editor. If this was sent to you, subscribe here so you don't miss the next lesson.

Hey Reader,

I spent last week with my family in Mexico.

It was warm and sunny and we swam and ate and drank and played.

My 15-month-old twins wore life jackets designed as lobster tails. It was adorable.

Why am I telling you this?

Because I didn't write or edit for an entire week.

It was glorious. #mentalhealthbreaks

But today?

I'm rusty. I have to work extra hard to get ideas from my brain to my fingers.

Luckily, I do this for a living, so I can get back on the bike faster than most.

But some people are scared to take a break, like ever, out of fear of losing their touch.

I get it. Writing streaks are cool, but you know what's cooler?

#mentalhealthbreaks

So today, I want to share an exercise that'll help you feel confident about getting back into the swing of writing if and when you take a break.

It's a simple four-step process that helps me every time:

Step 1: Let your stream of consciousness flow

Open up your laptop or notepad and start writing whatever comes to mind.

Literally, anything.

It can be about how you burned your toast, smelled it, and thought you were having a stroke.

Or how your kids woke you up at 2 am, and you had to lie on their floor until 5 am holding their hand through the crib (yep, that happened to me this morning).

This is your warm-up. It's like walking and stretching to loosen your muscles before a run.

Do not worry about grammar, flow, or any rules. Just write.

For example, I was feeling super raw this morning, so I streamed about how I feel about entrepreneurship.

Here's what I wrote:

Now that you've got your brain lubricated, you have two choices:

1. Carry on with the idea you started
2. Leave it for what it was, a warmup, and move on

Step 2: Outline it

I decided to carry on with my idea. If you discard yours, start your outline with a fresh one.

I find outlines useful because they're a baby step toward a full draft.

Takes the pressure off. And often kills blank page syndrome.

Back when threads were cool on Twitter, I wrote one about my 11-step outline process for long-form drafts. You can check it out here.​

Short-form is a bit more complicated because there are a zillion ways to format your narrative.

I find it easier to break my short-form outlines into parts to fill in, like so:

Here's my outline for my raw entrepreneurship ramble:

Step 3: Write the draft

Your brain is working now. You've run the first mile and are feeling that runner's high.

Time to write.

Get it out of your head and onto that paper.

Nothing fancy about this step. Just write.

Step 4: Edit

You're never done writing until you edit. If you're on this newsletter, you better believe it!

Go back and make sure your hook or introduction taps into people's emotions, makes them stop the scroll, and encourages them to read on.

Make sure you've cut redundancy, filler, and wordiness.

Make sure your narrative flows logically.

Make sure every sentence forwards that narrative.

Make sure your word choice is specific, not general.

Make sure your takeaways encourage conversation or action.

Curious how my post turned out after editing?

​Go read it.​

There you have it!

A simple process to overcome a rusty writing brain.

Although...

There is another way.

And it doesn't involve coming up with fresh ideas at all.

In fact, if you write long-form drafts of any kind (blogs, newsletters, articles), past you has already done the hard work.

You're sitting on piles of ideas waiting to be mined and turned into short-form gold.

I'm working on a new project with Rob Lennon called Long to Short.

​Register your interest if you're keen to unlock 50+ social posts from one ~1000-word draft.​

Catch you soon!

Erica

PS. If you want help writing hooks that stop the scroll or editing your long or short-form content, I'll reopen my Hooked on Writing Hooks and Content Editing 101 courses when we release Long to Short in a few weeks. Sit tight.

​

Erica Schneider

​​​

​

​