Re: OT: Books on writing?

[Harry Binswanger hb@xxxxxxxx]

Writing gets the words; editing gets the right words.
Editing doesn't just affect the product, it also affects the producer,
training his subconscious, incrementally, to produce progressively better
prose on the first draft. A proper schooling would begin this process
early--having students edit what they write, lodging better ways to express
themselves in their brains. But even in today's outrageously bad
educational system, people who write professionally get plenty of
on-the-job training by the editing that they themselves do of their own drafts.
>  A simple but fundamental question seems in order here:
>  Assuming that we are dealing with a subject of some
>  conplexity, how does one know what one thinks about
>  that subject until one gets it into the right words,
>  which implies editing as one goes along, no?
>
>  In short, logically writing comes before editing, but
>  does it take place in that order experientially? Do the
>  two not take place at the same time? Otherwise, how
>  does one avoid producing pages and pages of murky prose
>  needing so much revision that in the end one might as
>  well start over from scratch.
>
>  M. W. Poirier


Harry Binswanger
hb@xxxxxxxx