I love your additions to that post about writing! Completely agree with everything you said. I've been to quite a few author talks where they said that they essentially just thought about the novel for a while and then wrote it down and it was completely finished (I assume after a quick typo check!). In my own writing as well I only tend to do one draft and then a little bit of checking and rewriting. It frustrates me whenever anyone says that there's only one correct way of writing!
Aw, thank you! I reblogged a version of the original post with less commentary and felt some...”disagreement” is too strong a word, but that was the problem; I had caveats and wasn’t sure how to voice them while still acknowledging OP’s advice could be very helpful. So your addition greatly assisted in getting my thoughts in order.
I’ve zigzagged a lot on my opinions on doing multiple drafts: personally, I think of how I write as only doing one draft (plus a “zeroth draft” which is a really messy, fun outline), but with a lot of tinkering over individual sentences. I really don’t like the advice to “never edit when you’re writing”: for me, editing is an enjoyable and creative act. (Full disclosure: I’m a copyeditor for my day job, so I really love it.) But I know for other people the editing mindset is too different from their writing mindset and doing both at once kills their joy in creating. It’s sad to me that editing is built up into such a scary thing and I’m glad to see any posts that help to demystify it, whether they do so by saying “Actually, extensive editing isn’t always necessary at all” or “Actually, extensive editing can be incredibly fun and worthwhile; it helps to break it into these bite-sized steps.”
Ultimately, I think the most important thing is that the author makes thoughtful decisions about their work at some point, determining what they want to say and how to do so effectively: they might do it over the course of multiple drafts, they might do it while outlining, they might do it while writing the one and only draft, they might do it with the help of a copyeditor or beta, they might do it in their subconscious and channel a perfect single draft through a Ouija board. Or they might do something different for each story. Any advice that shows how the process works for a writer can be helpful by example, especially when it’s done in a simple, encouraging, and non-dogmatic way.
