Once again, I really appreciate your vulnerability and generosity in giving this window into your writing life. "Hacking away at sentences" resonated in a major way. Yes. I do a lot of hacking. It never ceases to amaze me how my inner critic - the very one who is rarely, if ever, satisfied with my word choices and flow, can then get on me for spending too much time hacking and polishing. What a clever cad, that inner critic.
I find this fascinating. But what I’d really like to know is what do you consider a new draft? If you revise just part of it, is that a new draft? Or do you need to work on the whole essay to consider it a new revision? Or do you save it as a new draft every time you touch the file and then close it again? I also wonder how many of these drafts you brought to writers groups, etc. for feedback? From another slow writer :-)
Hi Louise. It's a great question. Sometimes, the next draft has this large change in it, like a whole different ending. Other times, my next draft is a full re-write, where it doesn't look anything like the draft before it, but it's a lot stronger. I have a hard time saying "This is draft one and this is draft two." Like a lot of writers, I find myself tinkering a lot. In answer to your other question, all of the writing that I have published has been shared in either writing workshops or writing groups in order for me to get feedback and work on it before sending it out for publication. Hope that helps!
Once again, I really appreciate your vulnerability and generosity in giving this window into your writing life. "Hacking away at sentences" resonated in a major way. Yes. I do a lot of hacking. It never ceases to amaze me how my inner critic - the very one who is rarely, if ever, satisfied with my word choices and flow, can then get on me for spending too much time hacking and polishing. What a clever cad, that inner critic.
I find this fascinating. But what I’d really like to know is what do you consider a new draft? If you revise just part of it, is that a new draft? Or do you need to work on the whole essay to consider it a new revision? Or do you save it as a new draft every time you touch the file and then close it again? I also wonder how many of these drafts you brought to writers groups, etc. for feedback? From another slow writer :-)
Hi Louise. It's a great question. Sometimes, the next draft has this large change in it, like a whole different ending. Other times, my next draft is a full re-write, where it doesn't look anything like the draft before it, but it's a lot stronger. I have a hard time saying "This is draft one and this is draft two." Like a lot of writers, I find myself tinkering a lot. In answer to your other question, all of the writing that I have published has been shared in either writing workshops or writing groups in order for me to get feedback and work on it before sending it out for publication. Hope that helps!
That makes sense. I always wonder how other people count drafts.