Writing and Editing

Back in the day, when I first starting writing various stupid things to My Friend Jonny, I concluded that I was not a very good writer--but I was a good editor.

A really good writer can sit down and just bang out great stuff. Anthony Troloppe qualifies. He wrote 47 novels, all in longhand, much of it (if I remember my Troloppe) while on the train to his day job. He'd finish one novel and start the next one the next day. Isaac Asimov is the gold standard for writerly productivity. There's debate about how many books he wrote--even he lost track; the number is now considered well above 400, and may be greater than 500. Of course he had an advantage over Troloppe: the typewriter had been invented. No telling what Asimov would have done with a word processor. It might have been in the thousands. And if the Internet had been invented it might have gone up even further--or dropped to zero as he surfed his way to idiocy.

I don't have Troloppe's that talent, much less Asimov's. For one thing, I have trouble finishing what I start. For another I've found that most of what I write isn't very good; but almost everything has some good ideas in it. So I keep the good ideas, and rewrite the rest, and gradually something emerges that I'm happy with. "Writing is rewriting," someone has said. For me, "writing is editing." I know what's good and not good. I throw out the not-good, keep the good, and assign my writer-self to do a next draft. Then I repeat the process until my editor-self is satisfied. Over time, my writer-self has gotten better--or perhaps my editor-self has grown more tolerant. Or both.

In any case, the "Formula for Creativity" for me has been this:

1. Create a lot.
2. Throw away the crappy stuff. (There may be a lot of it)
   
3. Keep the good stuff. (There will always be at least some)
   
4. Create some more.
5. Stop when it's good enough.
   

The problem is that I haven't wanted it to be that way. Here's the process I want:

1. Create something perfect the first time.
2. Tell the editor to shut-the-fuck-up.
   
3. Stop, because perfect is more than good enough.
   

Since I haven't been able to get what I've wanted, I've responded in a very effective way: by going on strike. The process has been:

1. If you can't create something perfect the first time, don't create anything at all.
2. That way, all of what you create is perfect.
3. The editor has been shut up.
   
4. Whoopie doo.
   

Clearly this is not a good strategy. So it's about to change as follows:

1. Write this essay, without too much editing.
2. Read through it once and fix what is obviously wrong.
   
3. Move along. Move along.
   

So in less than 30 seconds, I'll hit the publish button and we're on the new process.