Fast vs. Perfect – Which Are You?
When it comes to writing your novel, there are two schools of thought:
- Get it done and fix it later
- Take your time and do it right the first time
Most of my life, I’ve been firmly in the second camp – agonizing over my words as I put them down, taking plenty of time to be sure a scene is right before I move on to the next.
This method, however, has not been without problems. I have several unfinished manuscripts languishing about. As I painstakingly worked on each one, the passion and interest I had for each idea faded until one day I was no longer interested in working on them at all. And now they sit, ignored and unfinished.
Recognizing this as an undesirable outcome, I find myself now leaning toward the first practice. I wrote fast and pushed through to the end of one manuscript even though I changed the plot in the middle. I changed it so much that the second half of the story bears no resemblance to the first half. It will need major revisions to become a coherent novel. But it is a finished first draft.
So my current strategy is to blaze through the first draft, no matter how crappy it comes out, just to get it done. Then I have something that I can revise into perfection. A completed first draft gets me one step closer to a finished final product.
So… fast vs. perfect… which method works better for you?
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One comment
Angelica on July 31, 2008 at 4:17 am
I’ve started a couple of novels doing perfect. I kept doing that for awhile untill I realised the reason I couldn’t get past the first ten pages was that I kept on polishing them instead of creating the rest. Then I tried fast (or at least faster) and that worked so much better for me! I can’t say I liked not going back and change what I had done wrong while I wrote but I finished the first draft and after that the writing went smoother.