The dirty little open secret to writing is that no one will ever know, nor care, how many drafts of a thing were written - people will only ever care about the crafted thing, and will, despite all knowledge to the contrary, assume it came out fully formed that way. No one thinks about shit drafts.
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Really good ideas
Ok, decent ideas
Ok, any idea is fine
The job of the first draft is to exist. Even if your final story is entirely different.
A former technical writer, I called my development process "spew and review".
Writing is on that list and your posts inspire me almost daily. Thank you
Funnily enough, I was reading a copy from the library (vol 6) so I don't quite know what to say here.
No one sees the thousands of shots the pro's miss on their way up.
1 - delete the crap I don't need
2 - arrange the crap in logical order
3 - discover the crap I still need
4 - go harass people for the missing crap
And I never let management see my first draft. 🕵️♂️
ka-ching
That's sculpting. Drafting is the art in action.
It's worked for me since 1987. YMMV.
"It was like taking dictation."
That's not to say he didn't edit.
I am 100% certain there is an early draft of Harry Potter where Hermione is in Ravenclaw and Ron is in Hufflepuff but JK changed it because she couldn't be bothered to deal with the fact that this would make it harder for them to communicate easily.
The joke is in there somewhere.
Which includes the note “Something Something spy shit”
Unless you have written the drafts.
Apoplectic euphoria ensued.
CK
It showed the details of writing, that the average person such as me would never know,
Still amazed at what it must take to write.
He spent several weeks going through his big stack of compositions, mumbling "dog howler" and dropping it in the trash.
Ventura Publisher saved me