I've written a fair number of magazine articles, and also a lot of white papers and other documents.
For me, I usually spend a day or two just thinking about it in my head. Going over what would be a logical thought flow and things like that. When I sit down to actually write, I tend to have very few revisions. My first draft is much closer to the typical persons 5th draft (I think), but that's because I've been revising and editing in my head first.
You remind me of a Japanese artist that envisioned the movements he was going to make to make his painting for a long time and then when he finally started moving the painting was done extremely fast. I forgot his name but I thought it was fascinating. I agonize over the first line of whatever I have to write for a long time but once that first line is done the rest goes easy.
I found that when I first started writing regularly I would spend a lot of time doing constant editing similar to the example shown in the linked article. This would become distracting and time consuming, then I'd forget other things I had wanted to say. So I found it better, for me, to just kind of write things in my head first and then sit down and write -almost more transcribing vs. "writing".
Thanks, thats really helpful for me. I am just starting to learn to write blog articles for my business and I certainly do a LOT of editing. Glad to see someone progress to where I want to be at... one day
For me, I usually spend a day or two just thinking about it in my head. Going over what would be a logical thought flow and things like that. When I sit down to actually write, I tend to have very few revisions. My first draft is much closer to the typical persons 5th draft (I think), but that's because I've been revising and editing in my head first.