The rough draft can contain a warmth that excessive polishing makes difficult to recover.

First versions are written by someone who is thinking rather than performing. The awkward phrase, the sentence that runs long because you were excited, the joke that only half works: these carry the temperature of a person, and each round of tidying tends to remove a little of it. Polishing improves accuracy and often costs warmth, and the trade is rarely made consciously. By the fourth pass the thing can be correct and unrecognisable.

Keep the early version of anything you are working on. When the finished piece feels flat, go back and see which line you smoothed away, and put it back in.