A potential strength

[Incanus]

I’ve realized something about myself as a writer that looks like a possible strength:

I enjoy editing more than I enjoy drafting or brainstorming.

This seems to be backwards from most folks, if I understand it aright. For me, the less material there is to work on, the harder the work is. A story in its infancy is just a few amorphous ideas that go together reasonably well, but all the work still lies ahead. Also, those initial ideas had better be damned good, because I’m going to be spending a lot of time working with them. I have great difficulty coming up with the next few abstract ideas that go with the first ones. My brain just seems to slip and slide around, finding nothing to latch on to. In fact, it was this sort of thing that held me back for years–I just wasn’t in love with the story concepts I was coming up with.

But, eventually, when I’ve got a draft, all that stuff is behind me and I can start hammering everything into shape. I like tweaking and polishing. I like seeing the results of all the previous work really starting to come together and starting to look decent.

So, this has got to be a good thing, yes?

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

It's definitely a good thing if you enjoy the process!

Editing can be a chore, so I hear, but I actually do like to read my work over and over. The only thing I hate about editing is when after 20 reads I still missed an error that was in the first chapter—which, in the most recent case, was spotted easily by a beta reader. There was a part where my character Addison repeated her name three times, and I actually misspelled the name twice so the name was there, three times in a row, spelled three different ways. On the bright side, the anthology has not yet been published, so I was able to submit a (hopefully-really-this-time) error-free revision.

When I edit a comic page, I don't have the same sense of dread. Maybe because I'm editing more for content (having words better fit action/personality) and less to fix typos. (That, or I failed to notice typos so far... gulp.)

 

[Russ]

I’ve realized something about myself as a writer that looks like a possible strength:

I enjoy editing more than I enjoy drafting or brainstorming.

This seems to be backwards from most folks, if I understand it aright. For me, the less material there is to work on, the harder the work is. A story in its infancy is just a few amorphous ideas that go together reasonably well, but all the work still lies ahead. Also, those initial ideas had better be damned good, because I’m going to be spending a lot of time working with them. I have great difficulty coming up with the next few abstract ideas that go with the first ones. My brain just seems to slip and slide around, finding nothing to latch on to. In fact, it was this sort of thing that held me back for years—I just wasn’t in love with the story concepts I was coming up with.

But, eventually, when I’ve got a draft, all that stuff is behind me and I can start hammering everything into shape. I like tweaking and polishing. I like seeing the results of all the previous work really starting to come together and starting to look decent.

So, this has got to be a good thing, yes?

My good friend, and very successful writer, Robert J. Sawyer feels exactly the same way. He feels that you are just building a big rock with the first draft and you really get down to carving your work into something beautiful once that first draft (sometimes called a "vomit draft") is out of the way.

So yes, that sounds like a strength to me.

 

[Incanus]

My good friend, and very successful writer, Robert J. Sawyer feels exactly the same way. He feels that you are just building a big rock with the first draft and you really get down to carving your work into something beautiful once that first draft (sometimes called a "vomit draft") is out of the way.

So yes, that sounds like a strength to me.

I find this encouraging! Thank you, Russ.

The downside of this process, for me, was that I was trying too hard to write with polish during the first draft. I knew better, but the editor in me just could not sit still. This was the main reason for my relatively low word count output over the last year (you may recall my 'tortoise' thread).

I'll be tackling my first novel coming up pretty soon here, and this time I plan on 'vomiting' it out first. One reason I was trying to write 'well' during drafting was so that I could get comfortable with my writing voice--I needed to prove to myself that I could actually write in a manner that safisfied me. And while I'm not exactly warm and cozy with it yet, I feel I have enough confidence now that I can vomit first and clean it up later. (Eeww-yuk.)

 

[Svrtnsse]

Definitely a strength.

I too have this compulsion to edit as I go, and to polish everything word until it's just right. It's not very productive.

In a way I think I've gotten around it by doing very detailed outlines. I know almost exactly what's going to happen throughout the scenes I'm writing already when I start them. The means I can focus more on the word crafting than on building the story or keeping track of the action - because I already did that earlier.

Still, I do enjoy editing. Though I guess I should say I enjoy polishing. In truth, I've not finished a major story to the point where I'm good to begin on the editing (the first draft of my novel is gone, but I'm spending time away from it to make the editing easier on the heart).
Polishing the text until it's the best it can be is really quite fun.