I've noticed I tend to work in three passes, although not necessarily three tries.

First is an over-abstracted mess that may or not work before it eventually collapses. Brainstorming.

Second is a rewrite aiming for compactness, that could end up impossible for anyone else to understand.

Third pulls just the right amount of abstraction out of the terseness of the second pass.

I treat it like a feedback driven control-system. Too much abstraction? Dial it down. Not enough abstraction? Dial it up. Repeat until good enough.

If I stop at 1 or 2, the code is poor. If I don't oscillate, it takes more passes.