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How many of you write down everything you want to say, and end up spending three times as long massaging the sentences so that they perform exposition in the proper order, have good imagery, don't echo or repeat identifiers, and just generally sound good?
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Nature of the beast, I fear. But it gets better over time. I'm currently at the stage where I only agonize over 70% of my sentences after the first draft is finished. It used to be 100%...
While there will always be fluff to cut, sentences to strengthen, and words choices to ponder over, with practice you'll avoid writing a lot of this stuff on the first draft. It just takes time. Don't worry about it. Just write. The editing stage in necessary, and will always be, I suspect.
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Sentence structure is organic for me; I've transcended having to worry about poor structure. However, while I can write very smooth prose, the emotions and characters may not be so well polished :/.
[Edit.] Well, the above is a lie. I lied.
[This message has been edited by Phanto (edited April 26, 2005).]
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Yes, it takes me ages to get everything working, and still people tell you something could be better. Phanto; so glad you lied, was getting jealous reading you expose. li
Posts: 112 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Time, practice, more time, more practice and eventually you will dread the editing less.
I'm in the process of fleshing out and overhauling my latest flash story. I wrote the whole thing in just under an hour and a half. I spent three hours editing the first half. It isn't that the original sentances were all bad, just not as good as they should be. Some points need to be clarified, and other problem points need to be addressed. Not to mention I usually need to add some support to later sections that I missed the first time.
Editing is just the detail work of creating a good story. It doesn't have to be rushed, and do yourself a favor and read the sentances out loud. I find more mistakes that way. Cluncky sentances are easier to recognize when your tonge becomes twisted trying to pronounce it.
It does get easier, but I doubt I'll ever be perfect in the first draft...guess that's why it's a draft.
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Me too, R. I tend to run out of steam for the last third of any story, and just write it in summary. I flesh out the scenes on the rewrite. Just getting the story out on paper is HARD work. After that, adding scenes and improving sentences is cake.
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I love editing too. Playing with language, rhythm, and flow is my favorite part of writing! Call me crazy, but I even like editing other people's work.
...although the entries for this Creative Writing class stretched my patience a little. Adding fifty commas per page in peer editing just doesn't do it for me....
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"...perform exposition in the proper order, have good imagery, don't echo or repeat identifiers, and just generally sound good?" I think the more reading (of good authors) you do, the more natural it becomes to write good sentences. For myself, it is not usually the STRUCTURE of my sentences I go back to edit, but the CONTENT - which certainly can include imagery, and often does include expostion.
Posts: 19 | Registered: Apr 2005
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IMHO, The editing stage is where the whole story starts to come together. It's where you add in the little things that you didn't think of on the first pass through, and smooth out the wording to make it understandable and enjoyable to your readers.
Posts: 497 | Registered: Jun 2004
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I love editing, too. The only problem is that for a long time I'd start editing before I finished writing, which is pretty much a death sentence if I ever want to finish anything. I finally got out of that habit... mostly. That's part of the reason that I write most of my stuff in a notebook first: it takes a lot more effort to go back and scribble stuff out or white it out or whatever than it does to use copy and paste or the backspace key or any of that other good stuff. And I edit as I type things in, so nothing on my computer is raw first draft. Well, almost nothing.
Posts: 437 | Registered: Feb 2005
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I love editing other people's stuff, but really struggle on my own. Definitely I use the time I spend doing crits for y'all as a way to avoid my own work.
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