Quote:
Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze
In my experience, you seem to underestimate the perfectionism of certain writers. Virginia Woolf, who was certainly prolific, subjected virtually everything she wrote to myriad revisions, and she and her husband sometimes published her books, did they not? I personally am far from prolific, but every story I write goes through twenty to thirty drafts.
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Fair enough -
some writers may be able to. I'll still stand by my assumption that the overwhelming majority of
first-time authors won't be able to produce perfection without any outside help at all. (This doesn't necessarily have to be a professional editor. A trusted friend, family member or any other "beta reader" with an eye for things to point out works well, too.)
Clearly no generalisation works for absolutely everyone; there will always be exceptions. But perfectionism or not, and going through thirty drafts or not, I just can't see the vast majority authors produce perfection completely on their own - and even less so on their first time out (which, IIRC, the first HP book was for JKR).
(And then there's the question of what "perfection" means. What the author may regard as a perfect product - what you as the reader may regard as a perfect product - will no doubt appear as a mangled, illiterate mess to someone, somewhere else...)