Omit needless words. It’s perhaps the surest way to make your writing more readable.

But there’s a catch. “Less is more” is a great editing strategy. It’s a bad writing strategy. And it’s an awful brainstorming strategy.

I’ve learned these things the hard way.

When you’re writing a first draft or brainstorming a new idea, you want to have some sense of flow. You want to let ideas bounce off one another. Doing so helps reveal connections. You begin to see the ideas waiting below the surface.

To flow, you must give yourself permission. You must allow yourself to think and write down all the shit. You can’t do this if you’re thinking less is more. At this stage, more is more.

For me, this is the hardest part of writing. I don’t want to be wrong. I don’t want to think dumb thoughts—especially if people are paying me to have good ideas.

And yet you must. Because if you don’t go through this crucial process…if you try to start at the end…if you begin with “less is more” and don’t explore any further…

You usually wind up with writing that feels like a first draft. Because that’s really all it is.

Minimalism isn’t about doing less. It’s about stripping away what’s unnecessary, to reveal the essence of something. To do that you start with more, and build to less.

Writing a first draft can often feel like a guessing game. The whole time you’re wondering What the hell am I trying to say?

In my experience, the answer often appears—somewhat magically—in the very last sentence of your first draft.

Why? I can’t say for certain, but here’s my guess:

By time you’ve written a first draft, you’ve done some deep thinking about your subject. What’s more, you’ve done the hard work of actually writing down those thoughts. They’re outside your head now. So you’ve gained a new perspective.

Plus, the last sentence is often a nice distillation of everything that came before.

So here’s what I like to do:

Once I’ve written that last sentence, I move it to the beginning. I make it the very first sentence.

This edit doesn’t always work or make sense. But you’d be surprised by how often it does.

Now your essay/blog/email/Tinder message opens with a really clear statement. It says exactly what it’s about.

From there, you can see how everything else you’ve written relates to the first sentence. It becomes much easier to cut, restructure, or rewrite, because you finally know what you’re trying to say.