🚀 go-pugleaf

I know a very successful, intelligent, popular author who rewrites
everything until it is right.  This is what he does:

1.  Draft with scraps of paper, clippings, pictures, sketches, etc.,
in a notebook which becomes a living, ongoing major resource.

2.  Draft story with computer word-processing program.

3.  Copy and rewrite first draft with typewriter.

4.  Copy and rewrite typewritten draft with word-processor.

5.  Repeat 3 and 4 until satisfied.

His contention is that typing at the computer is great for fast work
and that the more painstaking labor of typing on a Selectric focuses
the writer's attention sharply on each word.  And, when writing, it is
well to remember that each word counts in the building of the story,
no matter how long or short it is.  Spelling and grammatical errors
tend to be corrected in the computer passes; word-choice, character,
descriptions, and plot work in the typewritten.  This seems like a
fine way to work, and the quality of his writing is a testimonial to
the effectiveness of rewriting and improving one's prose until it is
not merely satisfactory, but the best one is capable of producing.

For technical (descriptive) and letter-writing, which are far more
focused and task-driven than fiction writing, it is probably easier to
get it right in the first draft.  Still, the quality of much of the
writing in handbooks and on business correspondence is so bad that
clearly there are very few who can get it right on the first, or even
the second, pass.


Elizabeth Willey

[And for my own practice, I write and rewrite until I come as close to
BEST as I can.  I'd hate to put my name on something I wasn't proud of
having written.]