::sigh::

[ksmith]

Yet another example of sweeping advice that may or may not apply to you.

Speaking as someone who has rewritten every single one of her books, and has been told that the rewriting improved them immeasurably, do whatever works. Some people can write straight through with little if any editing, ghod bless 'em, and others labor over every other word and some of us fall somewhere in between and Spare Me the freaking generalizations as to what will work and what doesn't. If something works for you, fine. If it doesn't, find what works and go with that. But your process is your process, and like your skin tone or your tendency to get heartburn after eating chocolate or the little flutter in your innards when you see pics of Alan Rickman, it's inborn, perhaps inexplicable and possibly annoying, but it's the way your brain works and if you try to argue with brain, said brain, well, won't listen. So you can either beat it against the wall or work with it, and whatever works for you, work with it, and if it's writing straight through or outlining to death and beyond or throwing 15 pages a night at the wall to find the 5 that stick, it is what it is. If you don't know what it is, you will find it in time, possibly by trying the method decribed above, and either finding that it works or it doesn't. And if it doesn't, IT'S OK TO MOVE ON AND LOOK FOR SOMETHING ELSE. It doesn't mean you've failed. It doesn't mean you're lazy, dumb, or that you'll never succeed in this market.

And if there's one generalization that always seems to apply, it's that there's no generalization that applies to everyone. And writers who think there is make my teeth hurt from the clenching.

Comments

[janni.livejournal.com]

Is it only because I'm not one of those writers that the one-draft-and-don't-you-ever-look-back folks seem particularly dogmatic about the One True Way thing, and don't seem to intuitively get that there really are other fully functional ways?

(Or maybe it's having been in a writer's group once with these sorts of writers. I left around the time the word "unprofessional" got bandied around for my process, because it didn't involve an outline and a single draft.)

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I think perhaps it's an overall personality thing. People who do write that way are so focused that they simply don't understand that other people may construct a story differently.

For "focused", substitute "blindered," if so inclined.