It seems that only when I try to write in a certain kind of cadence by revising as I write, I struggle to produce a work that is clear and graceful. (Now I think that I know the reasons why, and feel as though I could still succeed by using that method were I to get rid of them.) But when my goal is chiefly to be clear, and to write in a cadence of an ordinary kind, I find it much easier to say what I mean and to say it clearly and gracefully. But this I often do through much revision which I heavily perform in the process of writing down my thoughts. In light of this, should I edit as I go, or should I always first write a rough draft? If the prose of this post seems to be lacking any clarity or grace, know that I strove for neither one with the necessary diligence.
It all goes down to personal preference. A lot of people say to write it first and revise later, but if you do better revising while you write then do that.
IMO, you should do what gets writing done. As far as I can tell, your current process is not getting any writing done. And by "writing" I don't mean "flawlessly perfect writing". I just mean writing. I seem to remember that you were planning and outlining each sentence? That strikes me as serious overkill. I would suggest that you pick a rule. For example, require yourself to write, oh, one hundred NEW words per day, BEFORE you're allowed to revise anything. And keep every single day's product--the original as well as the revision. Give yourself two breaks a week, so you write that one hundred words five days a week. Five hundred words per week is a very small number of words—this post is more than 100 words— but I suspect that it's a huge increase on what you're writing now. So start there.
I tend to revise as I write - but the key here is that i'm actually writing - in the last year and a bit I've written 1.75 novels , a novella, three magazine articles, two short stories,, four poems, and four or five bits of flash. (and thats not counting the technical writing I do at work) To be frank your problem s not whether you revise as you write or not, it is rather, as you said yourself on another thread, that the problem is that you aren't writing anything. Do yourself and everyone else a favour and just write something instead of looking for reasons why you can't.
It is hard for me to refrain from revising while I write. When I notice even the slightest imperfection in my words, I feel compelled to revise them. And since I never attain this perfection in my writing through only a short time of revising, that is, when aiming for a certain effect, I can often never complete my work. So I guess I have to learn how to write without revising. Edit: Also, as big soft moose said, I seldom write anything.
Two things. One, it's not for any of us to pass judgment of how much, where or how anyone writes. Two, as I'm sure you already know, there is no single right answer to your question. Yes, revising as you go can disrupt the flow of ideas from brain to paper. And I suspect that there are some who find it convenient to say "I have to get it perfect before I move on" as an excuse for not pushing to the end, and therefore having the chance to judge the story in its entirety. As I rule, I accept imperfections in my first drafts because my goal in the first draft is to get the story down. That said, I sometimes find that I need to go back and re-read what I've written so that I don't forget some detail that might be important later on (important to remember in crime fiction). When I do that, it is often tempting to fix as I go. If it's a major structural problem with the story, I'll stop and correct it. Otherwise, I tend to let it go because I've accepted that whatever I write is going to be edited later. If you find your regular method isn't working for you, experiment with changing it. And good luck.
@waitingforzion -- Don't feel bad about not writing much right now. I think we all go through somewhat of a slump here and there. And the best thing about it is that you can change from not writing or not writing much to writing or even writing a lot. And the only thing you really need to do for that is to start typing. I like to revise as I go to some extent, but it's never enough to make up for the revisions that will be needed later on. Knowing that, I clean things up when I notice them, but I also know I can probably better edit my work with a little more time and space. With my novel, I've decided to edit and revise every 10k words. That way I have a good chunk of writing to work with and I'm not leaving everything until the end. Don't worry. You'll find your way back to writing. Writers always do.
Under normal circumstances I'd agree - but WFZ doesnt appear to be writing at all , which begs the question of why he wasting all of our time with his incessant questions
To get specific about my own habits, my goal is to finish one polished new scene every two days. If I have to compromise, the thing that should fall by the wayside is "polished"--one new scene is more important than that scene being polished. (Really, my polishing the scene to the extent that I do is largely self-indulgence, but as long as it's not stopping the writing, I'll keep self-indulging.) Now, I do revise a lot. My latest scene had three false starts before I decreed that it was time to just write the bleeping thing. Then I wrote it, then I saw the core of the scene in what I'd written, and then I rewrote it again. But that all happened within the two days.
This is the difficulty. If there is any part of him that wants to write, he's going to have to find a way to do it, and none of the ways tried so far seem to be doing it.
Get someone with experience to read a passage of Bradbury aloud. Then ask that same person to read a passage from your own work aloud.
Persnickety perfectionist, or just trying to quit smoking? (I couldn't finish anything for several years after cigarettes.) If you're a perfectionist, you should write a rough draft, put it aside for at least a week and go on to the next page or chapter or scene or whatever chunks it naturally divides into, and write a rough draft of that. If it's not coming, try making at least a point form outline of something entirely different. For example, if you've been working on a short story, revising the same page for a week, try writing an essay, or a poem, or a description of what you see through the window you've been staring out of all this time. Or fix the leaking faucet or learn a new card game... anything to keep your hands off that incomplete work. Then take it out and revise for grace and clarity. If you don't give yourself time to gain perspective, you can fiddle with a paragraph forever and never finish it. http://ae-lib.org.ua/texts-c/tolkien__leaf_by_niggle__en.htm
[Get someone with experience to read a passage of Bradbury aloud. Then ask that same person to read a passage from your own work aloud.] To get the cadence thing. I mean, if you wanted to get it. though of course all good writers pay attention to cadence, he was a true master of it.
Are you saying my writing must just suck so I should read someone better? My comment was directed at how often the OP mentions cadence. I wasn't saying I needed help with it.
There is no such thing as perfection. It does not exist, because writing is subjective. None of us will ever achieve perfection. When you accept that, you can move on and write.
