Monday, August 31, 2009

Work-in-Progress

I'm not one of those writers who blows through the first draft, getting it all down as fast as possible. I'm what Kurt Vonnegut called a basher. That is, I bash at every paragraph as I go along, trying to get it perfect before I move on.

And yet, I go back and edit in hard copy. No less than fifteen runs through this particular proposal and I still have pages that look like this:

No wonder I have a headache ...

4 comments:

Meredith Resnick said...

Ellen, I love your honesty and hearing about your writing process!

Carleen Brice said...

For me, better to have something on paper to edit than starting from scratch. So this is the good part.

Lauren Lipton said...

Oh, Ellen, I feel your pain. It could be worse, though. The edits could be in the dreaded red pencil--what journalists dolorously refer to as, "My editor bled all over my draft." XO

Ellen said...

Meredith ... Appreciate that thought! Thank you.

Carleen ... I second that.

Lauren ... Dreaded red pencil indeed! Perish the thought. :)