(Hello everyone, this is my first post. If there is a better place to post this type of query, please let me know) I've been doing hobby writing off and on for quite awhile now, and been doing translations in the last year or so (from Japanese). For both of these activities, the editing process seems to take a huge amount of time. Specifically, I generally go through several iterations (at least 5, sometimes as many as 10 or more). It's funny, but no matter how much I say "I'm going to write this great the first time!" when I come back again and again I keep finding things to refine and tweak to make things sound better. One of the reasons I have hesitated to try making a career out of fiction writing and/or translation is because of this massive amount of time. I generally feel my output quality isn't that bad (except maybe for my plot writing skills that need some work...), but it just takes way too long for me to imagine making a living off this. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to improve the number of iterations of a specific work needed for quality writing?
The number one suggestion is simply not to change anything until you're done. This gives the story time to cement in your head and reduces the amount of waffling you're going to do. Also, if you're done, you're not going to be opening up the same files and looking at them again and again, which limits your chances to run into things you just all of a sudden don't like about your past work. You were probably looking for ways to do a better job when you write, or the first time you edit, but the important takeaway here is that it's more important to keep moving forward than it is to do a perfect job.
Thanks for the response. By 'until I'm done', I guess you mean the generation of the content, right? (either actually writing the story, or the initial translation). If so, I agree with you, and generally I never start editing until I am done with the initial draft. Regarding doing a 'perfect job', if I was going to try and actively market either original works or translations, I guess I would want it to be perfect to have my best chances to make a sale. Hence the many rounds of editing.
You always want your work to be perfect, but no work ever is. Tolkien is a famous example of someone who never stopped screwing with his stories; he spent his whole life on one damn novel. Unless your one novel is just... Amazing... Like how Tolkien constructed a creation myth for English... Well, that's just probably not a great money-making proposition. It's better to have writing that's good enough.
Can you clarify on why it would be counterproductive? Are you saying there is something necessary in an iterative editing process to make a good piece of writing?
I think this instructional pie chart speaks for itself entirely, which I imagine most every writer can identify with: http://brandonsneed.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/writing-pie-chart.jpg Point being: it's what you signed up for when you first committed pen to paper. Addressing what I think you are asking, which is how do we make this editing process more efficient - well, I'm certain that there is a way (several ways), but one which I am ill-placed to advise on, having little experience myself. I'd also be interested in hearing other writers' thoughts on the matter.
Sort of, but not precisely. I'm saying that a good piece of writing requires accomplishing a lot of things, and demanding that you accomplish all of them simultaneously, when that doesn't come naturally to you, is likely to result in some of them falling on the floor. Imagine that you're cooking dinner, and you are determined that you're going to cook all the courses simultaneously. Even though some of them will keep just fine over the heat, you are determined that they'll all happen at once. If you're not really talented at doing all of those tasks simultaneously, there's a good chance that the food will suffer. Now, a restaurant chef likely does need to invest a whole lot of time into learning to cook many things simultaneously, if that doesn't come naturally to them. But if there's no need for that, why strain your capacity? If you're getting stuff done, not spending weeks on each paragraph, just take the number of editing passes that you need.
Between minor editing chapter by chapter, a full edit after the first draft is done, editing the second draft with input from beta readers and/or an editor, and another round of edits for a third draft, yeah, I spend a ton of time editing. It's time consuming, tedious and often boring as hell. That said, every time I'm in the editing process, I absolutely want to kick my own ass for not writing it well in the first place. The problem is, I don't really think you can, or at least I can't. There are so many things that just aren't going to come out well on the first pass, it's inevitable. It's the polish that makes a good book great, and I don't think you can really skip that step no matter how skilled of a writer you are.
When you look at a pile of peeled and sliced carrots ready to cook, do you kick yourself for not having cooked them simultaneous with peeling them? It's a process. I think that berating yourself for having a process is not necessarily a good thing.
Well, I have to have some humility. Otherwise my ego will swell to the size of the moon and drag everyone else into its gravity. Honestly though, I think it's because I'm wired naturally to be a problem solver and lean out processes. At my day job my specialty is eliminating redundancies and finding the best and most nimble solution to every problem. Writing is a totally different thing though, and I struggle with bringing those two sides of my personality together. ETA: Because I love me a good cooking analogy, I'll say this. I may not regret not being able to peel and cook the carrots at the same time, but I'll ding myself for not starting my mise en place early enough so that I'm not scrambling to get everything in the pan all at once.