View Single Post
Old 05-16-2013, 01:14 AM   #5
gmw
cacoethes scribendi
gmw ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.gmw ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.gmw ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.gmw ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.gmw ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.gmw ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.gmw ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.gmw ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.gmw ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.gmw ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.gmw ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
gmw's Avatar
 
Posts: 5,809
Karma: 137770742
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Australia
Device: Kobo Aura One & H2Ov2, Sony PRS-650
I think it depends on what you're writing for.

If you hope to be a professional - as in: earn predictable money from it - then I guess you have to learn to be able to write on demand. My profession is software development. I write code to requirement and to deadline, I can't afford to let it sit by for a month and come back and see if it still looks good. I've spent years honing those skills so that I can do that - but even so, there is much I would go back over now and do better, if someone would pay me to do so.

As much as I might like to write full-time, at the moment I can only consider writing to be a hobby. I can't write to requirement, nor to deadline - and I don't particularly want to. I want to write what makes me happy. The only deadlines I face are my own compulsions to see how it all comes out. I write the first draft and review it immediately, but then I do set it aside - it usually turns out to be for months - and then I come back and go over it again and again until I am happy it is as good as I can get it.

This is not to say that the slow road is the better road. It's a different road, that's all. If you write a lot very fast then you may learn many lessons from the sheer volume of what you have tried to do. If you write slow you may learn many lessons from the attention to detail this forces on you. With either approach, what lessons you actually learn is up to you.
gmw is offline   Reply With Quote