Rewriting versus writing

I’ve been iterating on how I create my session notes recently, by dropping in obvious placeholder content. Things like “comical situation involving an usually small troll under the bridge” or “a fight of some kind, something native to this area”. This framing means I can move quickly through an outline or set of ideas and then flesh things out to be better later. I think this is fairly obvious, but it’s not part of my norm. Then just last night I saw this Bluesky post that led me to the linked article and this quote hit home:

But I do have a trick that makes things easier for me. Since writing is very hard and rewriting is comparatively easy and rather fun, I always write my scripts all the way through as fast as I can, the first day, if possible, putting in crap jokes and pattern dialogue—“Homer, I don’t want you to do that.” “Then I won’t do it.” Then the next day, when I get up, the script’s been written. It’s lousy, but it’s a script. The hard part is done. It’s like a crappy little elf has snuck into my office and badly done all my work for me, and then left with a tip of his crappy hat. All I have to do from that point on is fix it. So I’ve taken a very hard job, writing, and turned it into an easy one, rewriting, overnight.