With the help of Twitter, I came across Alexander Chee's great essay on the subject of writing, Annie Dillard and the Writing Life. One part in particular struck me (I added the bolding):
In the cutting and cutting and the move this here, put this at the beginning, this belongs on page six, I learned that the first three pages of a draft are usually where you clear your throat, that most times, the place your draft begins is around page four. That if the beginning isn’t there sometimes it’s at the end, that you’ve spent the whole time getting to your beginning, and that if you switch the first and last pages you might have a better result than if you leave them where they were.
The part I put in bold is exactly what I find I do over and over again. In a way, it's a form of what journalists called "burying the lead." (Lead is sometimes spelled "lede.") I've posted about this before (The clausal writer).
What Chee says is bang on. For me, I often don't really know what it is I'm writing until I've written in circles for a while. It's sort of like cooking: you get out all the ingredients and set them before you and then realize, "Oh, this is what I can make with this stuff." Then you put away the ingredients you won't be using and get started on what you're making.
It isn't a problem unless you're disinclined to rewrite. Once the words are on paper, the real writing is supposed to begin. Add this, cut this, move this and so on. Unfortunately, we don't always do this. I know I don't, particularly on my blogs where I sometimes rush to get a post done and move on to other things. In fact when I look back on posts in my archive it can be quite embarrassing.
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