The Purge

 Creatives strive to improve with each project.  Writers want their next book to better than the last.  The question is; where does that happen?

I am currently crawling my way through the first edit of my third book.  Aside from the obvious goal of publishing this book, I want this book to be the best one I've written so far.  And staring at the brain dump of the first draft?

Ugh.

Aren't they ugly?  The rough draft, I mean.  They are littered with typos, unmentionable grammar failures, lost storylines, flat characters, and a plethora of other writing crimes.  When the goal is to be a better writer, the sloppy copy can be an absolute discourager.  Fifty chapters into this first edit and I truly question my ability as a writer.  Then, I have to sit back and remind myself of what a rough draft is.

For myself, the rough draft is a purge.  I am typing as fast as I can to purge the story from my mind before it fades away into obscurity.  If I slow down to consider past versus passed, or where to plop down a couple of beats to set a proper pace of the conversation, I lose my precarious hold of the story in my head.  I just have to type.  To hell with all of the "rules".  The grammar police just need to have a sandwich, because I have work to do here.

Regardless of how strong the drive to improve can be, we have to remind ourselves that the rough is the wrong place to look.  I would love the purge to be filled with proper balance of introspect and dialog, for the descriptions to paint a perfect landscape photo.  As I write more, I'm certain those aspects will incrementally improve, but the rough draft is the rough draft.  The first edit will always highlight the flaws.

That is why we edit.

I believe our improvements happen with our editing.  We get better at recognizing the flaws in our writing, and in our story.  With that recognition comes improved corrections, which ultimately result in an improved story.

I saw one of the talking heads in the booktube declare that if you edit your less than twenty times, then your book will fail.

My response?

Dude, you need to get better at editing.