We’re nearing the end of the summer growing season in our garden. We’re still getting a few tomatoes, and a second planting of Blue Lake bush beans is still producing, albeit noticeably more slowly now. A few green peppers are hanging on. We’ve cleared out the first green bean planting, the Brussels sprouts, and a tomato plant to make room for a fall growing of arugula, spinach, and turnips. It’s been tremendously hot and dry here, so it takes a bit more hope than usual for a successful fall harvest. Fingers crossed.

Often, when we write, we sense ourselves feeling our way through an overgrown garden, negotiating the tangles, the weeds, the overgown vines—everything that stands in our way of seeing the heart of whatever we’re working on. Revision, then, becomes a matter of cutting away excess so we can see what we’ve been writing our way toward.

How does one know what their mess of a draft is trying to be? Students often ask this question, which is really a question of objectivity. How can we move from being deeply subjective in the first draft(s) to being distant enough to evaluate what we’ve done? How do we find the heart of what we’ve written?

Here are four tips:

1. As you read your draft, be on the lookout for where you, or your characters, feel uncomfortable and vulnerable. Cataloging such moments is a good way of better understanding what you came to the page to explore.

2. Look at where you end. Even if it turns out to not be the landing place you keep, it’s still a good clue to what’s interested you in early drafts. How would a reader describe your work’s intentions based on where you chose to stop writing?

3. See if you have details or images that repeat themselves in the early draft. Ask yourself how the particulars express the abstract. Those abstractions are what you’re trying to communicate to your readers.

4. Look for moments where something shifts. Be aware of places in the draft where something new raises its head. Where are the moments where something in the atmosphere of the piece changes. Those moments may be indications of what you’re interested in highlighting in subsequent drafts.

As writers, we have a sense of what we’re feeling our way toward, but often we’ve put so much on the page we can’t see our intentions clearly. I hope these four tips will help you find the centers of what you’re writing so you can cut away the inessential.