Let the first draft be bad.

01 · Clear English is harder

Writing in English is possible. Making it easy to read is harder.

English is not my first language.

Writing in English is not an especially difficult thing for me.

Writing English that another person can understand easily is different. I do not want the reader to fight through every sentence. That is much harder.

Even now, my first attempt at a sentence can be far behind ChatGPT in readability and clarity. This happens when I do not slow down and organise my language.

02 · Writing is thinking

I still do not want to outsource the whole process.

This is not an argument for asking AI to write everything.

Writing helps me organise ideas. It shows me where my thinking is unclear.

I still suggest writing often. Write papers. Write proposals. Write reports. Find a workflow early, with or without AI.

03 · The final-sentence dream

I used to expect every sentence to survive.

When I was a student, I wanted every sentence I wrote to appear in the final version.

I put too much pressure on each line.

That pressure made it difficult to begin. I delayed the work. Then I had nothing to edit.

The cycle became worse.

04 · Write something bad

The first version only needs to exist.

Writing something bad is better than writing nothing.

A first draft does not need to be elegant. It does not need to be efficient.

It only needs to give the next version something to work with.

I can repair a clumsy sentence. I cannot edit an empty page.