There is a moment in every project where the thing you built stops being the thing you meant to build, and you have to decide which one you are actually making.
The first draft is generous. It keeps every idea, because none of them have been tested against each other yet. It is a survey, not an argument.
The cost of keeping
What makes the second draft hard is not writing — it is subtraction. Each cut is a small admission that a day of work was reconnaissance rather than construction.
The trick, if there is one, is to stop treating the cut material as waste. Keep an offcuts file. Most of it stays there. Some of it turns out to be the next piece.