Why you should overshoot your word count

Overwrite your first draft. As a newspaper columnist (approx a million years ago), I had to file 1,000 words on a trending topic every Friday morning.

I didn't sit down on a Thursday and lash out 1,000 words.

I spent hours researching the topic. Then I brainstormed angles, hooks, funny lines and so on.

Then I usually wrote about 2,000 words. Which I chopped back to 1,000 words.

By letting my thoughts spill from my mind as fast as my fingers could type, I got something down on the page.

And once I had something on the page, I could fix it.

You can't fix copy you don't have. Get writing!