Editing gaargh

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.

Some people find that it's easier to write a first draft if you muffle your internal editor and just write. Trying to edit as you write can slow you down and hamper your creativity, because you're too focused on sentence structure and grammar.

I've heard it explained by the old concept of "left brain/right brain." Some dispute whether this is a legitimate theory or not, but supposedly, the two halves of your brain work differently. The right half controls your artistic nature and creative writing abilities, while the left half controls your logic and editing abilities. If you try to use both halves at the same time, you get conflicting impulses. Your brain is fighting itself, so you don't get much accomplished. According to the theory, you should turn your internal editor off and just write. Use your right brain and let the spice words flow. Once you're done creating your story, you can flip the editor back on and let your left brain take over.

I don't know whether the left brain/right brain theory is true or not, but it makes sense. I'm definitely more creative when I'm not worrying about the mechanics of writing.

Orianna2000 said:

Some people find that it's easier to write a first draft if you muffle your internal editor and just write. Trying to edit as you write can slow you down and hamper your creativity, because you're too focused on sentence structure and grammar.

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Given that this seems to mostly affect younger writers (relatively speaking), I suspect a great deal of the reason lies not in "right vs left brain" but rather in the deterioration of education and today's general lack of rote skills. When you've had grammar banged into your head for 12 years, like they did to us old farts whether we were bored of it or not -- well, the value of rote learning is that you don't need to think about it; it's automatically there at your fingertips whenever you need it.

Now get off my lawn!

LOL! Maybe, but I think my brain may be wired differently than yours. Despite my unimpressive age, I know a fair bit about spelling, grammar, punctuation, and the mechanics of writing. It took a few years of studying and practice, but now it comes naturally. The problem is, I'm an obsessive editor. It's hard to concentrate on telling a good story while you're busy rearranging sentences and trying to think of better adjectives. If I don't shut that part of my brain off, I can't write freely.

Yes, it's annoying. But it's how my brain is wired. For me, it's necessary to make a distinction between writing and editing, otherwise I'd spend hours just trying to make one paragraph perfect.

Reziac said:

Given that this seems to mostly affect younger writers (relatively speaking), I suspect a great deal of the reason lies not in "right vs left brain" but rather in the deterioration of education and today's general lack of rote skills. When you've had grammar banged into your head for 12 years, like they did to us old farts whether we were bored of it or not -- well, the value of rote learning is that you don't need to think about it; it's automatically there at your fingertips whenever you need it.

Now get off my lawn!

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I think it's got more to do with younger people feeling like their writing should be a certain way. There's a certain confidence that comes with age.

NRoach said:

I think it's got more to do with younger people feeling like their writing should be a certain way. There's a certain confidence that comes with age.

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I'm more inclined to believe that it has more to do with what Reziac said, that the mechanics were drilled into the "old fogies," as compared to now. I heard a lot of schools now don't even really teach spelling, because, hey, spell check will catch it. I mean, really, editing was drilled into us. I had one English teacher who spent the first 10-15 minutes of each class on editing exercises. This was old school, as in underlining titles, using three lines under a letter to capitalize, and adding little "tents" to insert words. Back when you were ahead of the game if you had a typewriter.

I don't think it was the age/confidence thing, because growing up, I hardly ever did multiple drafts of my essays. It was just write it once, then pass it in. The only times where I actually did multiple drafts were when it was required -- as in we turned in a first draft, got it back, revised, resubmitted, got it back again, then did a final draft.

I wonder if it isn't both what NRoach has mentioned, as well as Rez's assertions. As you grow more confident in your voice and your writing, you start to write a tighter story from the beginning - IMO. Thus, less need to agonize with a red pen later on. And you have identified some of your bad habits, so you correct those in-line. (This is assuming, of course, that you know what those bad habits are from the start, perhaps to Rez's point.)

Here's another question to add to the mix: do you do all of your editing online, or do you also do an 'old-school' print out and line edit? We read and process things very differently on the computer screen versus paper. I have to think that also has an effect on the editing as well.

Orianna2000 said:

I don't know whether the left brain/right brain theory is true or not, but it makes sense. I'm definitely more creative when I'm not worrying about the mechanics of writing.

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That seems to be true for many writers, but the two are all one process for me.

tiddlywinks said:

I wonder if it isn't both what NRoach has mentioned, as well as Rez's assertions. As you grow more confident in your voice and your writing, you start to write a tighter story from the beginning - IMO. Thus, less need to agonize with a red pen later on. And you have identified some of your bad habits, so you correct those in-line. (This is assuming, of course, that you know what those bad habits are from the start, perhaps to Rez's point.)

Here's another question to add to the mix: do you do all of your editing online, or do you also do an 'old-school' print out and line edit? We read and process things very differently on the computer screen versus paper. I have to think that also has an affect on the editing as well.

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I am old school. I'd grown up hand writing all my essays. Literally every single essay I'd written for school had been at least handwritten first if there was a typed version.

I don't know if it's the medium of paper vs. screen, or if I'm just used to it, but I'm able to see better the areas that need revising when it's on a hard copy. And I scribble notes and make arrows all over the place, which helps too. So when I'm doing a final run-through of the rough draft (I write out of order), I do it on the computer using various programs (Word and epub, etc.) to have things jump out at me more. This is more just cosmetic fixes and to make sure the draft is cohesive. And then when I roll up my sleeves and really get down to business for some merciless editing, that's when I print out a hard copy to mark up.

We may have been drilled in grammar and spelling, but we weren't drilled in writing stories. I could do a 250 word essay in my sleep and get an A in high school. The same happened with the five page paper in college. A story is a whole different beast.