By Dennis Mellersh
The amount of re-writing or revision your novel will need doesn’t necessarily depend on your writing methods and practices.
It’s more a matter of deciding when and how you want to edit, polish, or revise rather than any particular writing method necessarily resulting in a need for more editing and revising than a different writing method.
Some experienced writers recommend, for example, that beginner writers should write quickly, and “get it down”, not stopping to ‘over-think’ or over-polish their words as they go. The idea is that by doing this, the writing will be more alive, fresh, and passionate.
Some established writers feel that in addition this approach keeps the plot and character development moving along more quickly.
In this writing method, you might not edit at the end of your composing day, and the next day you do the same thing; you again write quickly, getting your ideas down before they start to fade.
If as a new writer you take this approach every day and don’t take any time before your manuscript is completed to edit and revise, you are going to be faced with a big editing and possibly rewriting challenge that has to be done all at once when you complete your first draft.
If on the other hand, you write carefully, weighing each word and sentence, and then edit and revise at the end of each day of day, you will obviously have less editing and rewriting to do all at once when the first draft of your novel’s manuscript is complete.
In looking at the two methods, writing quickly and not revising each day, or writing more carefully, and revising as you go, it’s difficult to say which method would require the most overall or total revision time.
Most probably the time involved with each approach would be roughly equal.
So, it’s more a matter of making a personal choice based on your comfort zone and which method you feel best brings out your creativity gets your novel’s message out in a way that will interest your potential readers.
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