- Joined
- Dec 20, 2010
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My own first drafts are very nearly final draft, because I've got in the habit of editing on the fly. Later editing passes will add and refine (a descriptive here, a verb there), but there won't be any wholesale changes, and certainly no hack-and-slash.
Other writers' initial drafts get edited beyond recognition, often multiple times.
And everything between. Ain't no One True Way. Depends entirely on you, and how you write.
BUT -- I think James is right. A lot of bad early drafts are a matter of habit and inclination rather than necessity. If you're a pretty good editor, why not apply that skill on the first pass?? You can learn to do most or all of your editing on the fly, and then your first draft too can be pretty much final draft. And I have a suspicion that if you want to produce enough finished and salable works to make an everyday living at it, you've got to get pretty close to this method, because time is money and if you spend 3 weeks revising a $50 story, what have you accomplished? Better to spend 3 hours at it from start to finish, and make a decent hourly wage.
And I'll add that learning to edit as I go coincided with a major improvement in how I write.
Other writers' initial drafts get edited beyond recognition, often multiple times.
And everything between. Ain't no One True Way. Depends entirely on you, and how you write.
BUT -- I think James is right. A lot of bad early drafts are a matter of habit and inclination rather than necessity. If you're a pretty good editor, why not apply that skill on the first pass?? You can learn to do most or all of your editing on the fly, and then your first draft too can be pretty much final draft. And I have a suspicion that if you want to produce enough finished and salable works to make an everyday living at it, you've got to get pretty close to this method, because time is money and if you spend 3 weeks revising a $50 story, what have you accomplished? Better to spend 3 hours at it from start to finish, and make a decent hourly wage.
And I'll add that learning to edit as I go coincided with a major improvement in how I write.