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Rough draft vomit vs editing as I go, which one actually works long term?
So I used to force myself to finish a full messy scene before touching anything, and my first drafts took like 6 hours each. But last month I tried editing every 2 paragraphs as I wrote, and it took way longer per session but the final cleanup was almost nothing. Now I'm torn because the first way feels more creative but the second way makes me less scared to share stuff here. What do you guys do when the draft is still ugly, push through or clean up as you go?
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rowank831mo ago
Isn't this the same choice we make with everything? Cooking dinner, you can throw everything in the pot and fix the seasoning at the end, or you taste after every single step. Working out, do you blast through the whole routine and check your form later, or watch every rep in the mirror. The push through method keeps the flow going but leaves you a mountain to climb later, while the clean as you go method is slower in the moment but you're basically done when you finish. There's a real cost to switching gears every two paragraphs though, because you lose the thread of where the scene was going while your brain is in fix it mode. Maybe the answer is to pick based on what you plan to do with the piece, sharing soon means clean as you go, and just exploring means let it rip. Both work, they just trade work now for work later.
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