Hey there,

The shorter the bit of text, the harder I've always found it to write. You can restate yourself a few times in a longer piece and eventually get your idea across. When it all comes down to a tweet or a title, though, it's this sentence or nothing.

And so I'd sit there at the blank page, watching the blinking cursor keep time instead of writing what I'd set down to write. The first takes were always bad. It's less painful to just imagine what a well-crafted piece would look like than to write an inevitably bad take.

Then it's Friday, your piece is due, and a ticking click is an incredible forcing function to get you to write.

Somehow along the way I stumbled up on an idea that helped me write intros, even if they still weren't great. I'd just write and rewrite them, filling up a page with a half-dozen takes on titles and intros. Then I'd share them with my team, see what people thought, and iterate from there. And it worked. I can't say the intros were amazing, but I could consistently publish articles that got people to stick around, read, and share.

Write. Rewrite. Share. Remix from there. That's how I write.

Here's a longer take on that idea I just published on the Reproof blog: The best way to write? Rewrite.

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Until next time,

Matt + the Reproof team.

Reproof.app | @maguay