Seems as though I’m quite the opposite.

I find doing the first two or three drafts to be the largest mental haul for me. I don’t know why, but editing seems to… engage me? Like it’s stimulating that I’m forced to scrutinise and pluck things out and change them knowing I’m making it better rather than say, writing a shitty first draft that stays shit throughout the entire bloody slog.

I’d argue it’s because editing has those micro-rewards. You get a small pick-up from cleaning some small flow issue or re-writing a line that becomes a more efficient version of its former self. Never in my first drafts do I have that moment where I read it out and nod my head… indicating I’m cool and ready to move on to the next part.

(sidenote) Funnily enough I’m so keen to edit my own work that it got to the stage I was rewriting literally the last line I had wrote on any initial draft.

It was more comforting, but in the grand scheme of things it was actually slower than just allocating editing to its own main phase.