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make writing uncritical and fast? Maybe -- but the
first draft should still be pretty good.
I love a line J.K. Galbraith once wrote about "the
wonderful note of spontenaity that comes into my work after the seventh or
eighth rewrite."
On the other hand I was senior reporter on a small
daily newspaper back in the days of hot type and I got the stuff that
broke on deadline. I wrote my stories on "take paper" (half length) on an
upright typewriter and on the late breaks the press room foreman stood behind me
as I wrote. When he saw the second carriage return (which came at the end of a
paragraph) he would pull the paper from the typewriter and hand it to a copy
boy, who would take it directly to the editor; who would initial it
without reading it and send it out to be set. Meanwhile, I would have to crank
another sheet of paper into the typewriter and continue my story.
Good training, that.
I've been an editor myself a few times since then,
(once as copy editor on a big paper, a couple of times as editor of weeklies and
a couple more times as editor of trade magazines). I think writing is the better
job, but as a writer the one tool I want most is a good editor.
I've read a few books on writing, but I don't know
that I've learned anything from them.
andy turnbull
----- Original Message -----
Subject: Re: OT: Books on writing?
For once I
disagree with Patricia. Writing has to happen as uncritically, as quickly, as
freely as possible. Editing should be a secondary step. I have seen with
myself and with others how engaging the critical gear inevitably slows the
writing process down to a snail's pace, and doesn't, for all that, result in
better prose but only more stilted, lifeless prose. I really do think that
creation and revision are separate processes. Maybe it worked for Sayers, but
I have a feeling it's more likely that she only wished it did. I love the idea
of turning off the screen -- I have used that in teaching a very gifted writer
to type, but it had not occurred to me to apply it to actual writing.
Well, I beg to differ, but recall that I'm an
editor first and a
writer second. But I don't think you can ever LET your
critical
faculty lapse. It will do so enough on its own.
I cite
an interesting example: Dorothy L. Sayers was a (at one
time) well-known
author of who-done-its (the Lord Peter Wimsey
stories), plays,
translations (Dante's Divine Comedy, the Chanson
de Roland), and essays
literary and doctrinal. In a couple of the
Lord Peter stories, she
depicts a writer writing. And the writer
character is always editing as
she writes. FWIW.
--
Patricia M. Godfrey
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