However… There are a number of people who write a very, very rough first draft, and they submit something like their fourth or fifth draft, refining the novel and often cutting out chunks of it as they go. I don't know if the revision process takes longer -- I assume it must -- because it's not the way I personally work.
(Raising hand) That would be me. Not sure I've ever submitted something earlier than third or fourth draft (depending how you define a draft) and there are books I've worked on with 10 or more drafts.
I'm not actually sure this is a slower process, for me at least, because it would take me so long to write anything if I had to get it all right the first time through.
Just to reveal that I'm completely strange--for me, getting a first draft down is hard, and revision is a joy. I think I knew how to revise as a writer before I knew how to plot. (This meant my failed stories were very polished, making it hard to tell why they failed.)
Writing, for me, is a series of successive approximations, moving towards the final draft. For some books the starting point is farther off than others; but it always is a starting point.
One upside of this is that when my revision requests are good ones, I'm actually happy about them, and can thank my editor for them and mean it, and then take them and run with them.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2004-08-27 07:45 am (UTC)(Raising hand) That would be me. Not sure I've ever submitted something earlier than third or fourth draft (depending how you define a draft) and there are books I've worked on with 10 or more drafts.
I'm not actually sure this is a slower process, for me at least, because it would take me so long to write anything if I had to get it all right the first time through.
Just to reveal that I'm completely strange--for me, getting a first draft down is hard, and revision is a joy. I think I knew how to revise as a writer before I knew how to plot. (This meant my failed stories were very polished, making it hard to tell why they failed.)
Writing, for me, is a series of successive approximations, moving towards the final draft. For some books the starting point is farther off than others; but it always is a starting point.
One upside of this is that when my revision requests are good ones, I'm actually happy about them, and can thank my editor for them and mean it, and then take them and run with them.