Halfway there

I have reached the half way point in my first conscious re-write. Conscious as in deliberate, that is, rather than the ‘being awake’ kind (although being awake does help).

My ‘first’ draft of a piece of work is never quite that. I am able to suppress my inner editor sufficiently to get words on paper, but I do like a draft I can read and understand when I come back to it. So, as I write, I change things; knocking off some of the rougher edges as I go. Which means my first draft is never quite that. Bits of it are; other bits are second, third, or even fourth attempts to get the phrase, sentence, or paragraph into a viable state.

There is a balancing act here that I think many (if not most) writers find difficult, especially when they start. If you try to write perfect sentences as you go, you may never finish your work and you will probably have little or no concept of the overall shape of the piece. Beautiful sentences are fine. We all strive for that. But if, as a whole, they have no dynamic, if there is no sense of story, then they are a waste of time.

On the other hand, you want your 100,000 words (or whatever) to be sufficiently coherent and interesting to yourself to want to go back to them. Over and again.

I’m not sure people who don’t write quite appreciate this aspect of writing. The fact that a piece of work has to be drafted, re-drafted, read and re-read, altered, fine-tuned, all in the knowledge that the first person who reads it will probably point to a sentence on the first page and point out three errors.

This aspect requires a real passion for what you do. It also requires considerable skill.

Oh well, back to the drawing board.