One of the questions I’m asked most frequently as a writer (somewhat behind Where do you get your ideas? and Where do you find the time?) is How many drafts do you do? The simple answer to this question is As many as it takes. In general, whatever I write one day gets it’s initial polish on the next day before I start that day’s writing. I find that having something recent to work with gets me back in the writing frame of mind.
A book length manuscript gets a 3rd polish about two weeks after the entire rough draft is done to clean up what I’ve identified as bad, unclear, choppy writing. This is when I also fix things like spelling, grammar and formatting errors.
I do a 4th draft for continuity and more language polish.
Those are written in stone. Some sections of a work may be scrapped and re-written a dozen times or more depending on how unhappy I am with them. I’ve been known to spend thirty-six straight hours on six or seven pages that I just can’t get right and can’t let go. This is not something I would recommend to anyone, because I usually just end up throwing those efforts away after they’ve been completely wrecked and/or had the life squeezed out of them.
Anyway, for the morbidly curious, I thought I’d show you what a typical manuscript looks like between drafts two and three (i.e., the first “real” edit, as I think of it). The pages linked below are images from a novel called Agnosis, which is the next in queue to be blogged here.
Good writing is good editing.
D.
Filed under: Writing Tagged: | editing, science fiction, Writing, writing craft
I agree with you, the art of writing is in the editing, the selection of the right word in the right place, making language flow. It’s editing that tests a writer’s courage and perseverance. How hard are you prepared to work to create a perfect line of dialogue, over and over again for several hundred pages?
Good post–too many people don’t understand the sheer work and effort writing requires…
I agree completely (obviously, I guess), Cliff.
Now here’s the question: Am I the only one who keeps paper copies of all the hand-edited versions of manuscripts so I can go back if I ever want to and see what changes I made?
Unlike when I was in school, for some reason, looking back on all that red ink makes me happy. All of those reams of (generally useless) paper stacked in the pantry don’t make my wife nearly as happy, though.
I save my first drafts–why, I dunno. Posterity? Proof that a terrific idea was mine and not ripped off from somebody? I always write my first drafts by hand, whether I’m working on a story, a 475 page novel or a two line poem. Something about the feeling of pen on paper, the connections that creates in my mind. Keep writing, keep puttin’ one word ahead of the other…