Draft fast, edit ruthlessly
The way to write well is to separate the writing from the rewriting, and to do them in the right order. There is no great writing, only great rewriting, and the people who freeze are the ones trying to do both at once.
The full sequence resolves a tension you will find in the books. Some say free-write fast with the editor off. Others say think slowly and critically before you touch the page. Both are right, about different phases. Think hard and critically BEFORE you write, that is the message-selection from Part One, done slowly and sceptically. Then draft FAST and uncritically, with the inner critic silenced, letting the words come out rough. Then edit RUTHLESSLY, the critic fully back on. Think slow, draft fast, cut hard. That order gets you the best of both.
The editing pass is where the quality lives, and most of it is subtraction. The core drill: take your draft and cut every word that is not carrying meaning. Then read it again and cut more. The filler words hide in plain sight, "actually", "really", "just", "the whole thing", "genuinely", the soft qualifiers that feel like writing but say nothing. Delete each one and check the sentence still stands. It almost always stands stronger.
This is the paring-down habit and it is relentless. You are not trimming to a word count. You are removing everything that does not earn its place, until what remains is dense, every sentence carrying real load. Short does not mean choppy. It means concise: one sentence that packs a lot in, rather than a long one padded out or a thought chopped into stubs.
A hard part of editing is cutting the lines you are proud of. If a clever sentence does not serve the reader, it goes, however much you like it. The cleverness that performs for the writer instead of serving the reader is exactly the thing to cut. When in doubt, the line that shows off is the line to lose.
INTERVIEW EWOUD: What filler words do you personally reach for and have to cut every time? What's your tell?
INTERVIEW EWOUD: Tell me about a line you loved and had to kill because it served you and not the reader. What made you finally cut it?