Here’s a bad habit I see in a lot of campaign writers.
They write one sentence, then stop. Fix a word. Reread it. Fix it again. Move on to the next sentence and do the whole thing over.
That’s not writing. That’s stalling with extra steps.
There’s a writing app out there that solves this the hard way. Pause too long while typing and it deletes everything you wrote. Gone. Forever. No mercy.
Sounds brutal. But here’s why it works.
It forces you to keep moving forward instead of stopping to judge every sentence as you go. You get the whole ugly first draft out, mistakes and all. Then, and only then, you go back and fix it.
Most campaign writers do it backwards. They try to write the perfect ask letter on the first pass. That’s why it takes three days to finish a one-page mailer.
Here’s how this applies to your campaign.
Fundraising: Write your donor ask letter fast and messy first. Don’t stop to fix a typo mid-sentence. Get the whole pitch down, then go back and sharpen it.
Volunteers: Same rule for recruitment emails. A rough draft written in ten minutes with real energy beats a polished one that took two hours and lost its punch somewhere along the way.
Votes: Door-knocking scripts get better the same way. Write it fast, straight from the gut, then trim it down later. Don’t overthink line one before you’ve written line ten.
Beating your opponent: While his team is stuck in an editing loop arguing over commas, your team already banged out three drafts and picked the sharpest one.
Perfectionism isn’t writing. It’s hiding. Get the mess down first. Polish it second.
The takeaway: You can’t edit a blank page. Write it ugly, write it fast, then make it sharp.
Dr. Chuck Muth, PsD
Professor of Psephology*
(homeschooled)
* Psephology (see-follow-gee): The study of campaigns and elections