Tortoise Or Hare?

[NOIRTRASH]

Do you write with hair afire?

Or write like youre assembling a giant jigsaw puzzle?

I'm a tortoise.

Yesterday, for example, I cut 8000 words to use 250 superior words.

 

[NicoleZ]

Oh I see! You began as the hare, rattling off 8,000 inferior words and then shifted to tortoise mode and discarded the 7,750 superfluous ones. That reminds me of someone whom I see daily when I look into the mirror.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Oh I see! You began as the hare, rattling off 8,000 inferior words and then shifted to tortoise mode and discarded the 7,750 superfluous ones. That reminds me of someone whom I see daily when I look into the mirror.

No. The 8000 aren't inferior, theyre wrong. The 250 are right. Think ingredients.

 

[SusanJillParker]

Do you write with hair afire?

Or write like youre assembling a giant jigsaw puzzle?

I'm a tortoise.

Yesterday, for example, I cut 8000 words to use 250 superior words.

I write as if I'm about to die and am I'm trying to get all of my thoughts out of me.

After reading so very much through college and not writing anything but term papers, final exams, and essays, once I graduated, my writing poured out of me like projectile vomit.

Even on my bad days, I never write less than 1,000 words. On my best days, I write about 4,000 words.

I don't understand why it takes some writers a week or longer to compose one sentence. That's not me or my type of writing.

I never do an outline. I usually have the entire story in my head. Then, I go over it and over it, reading, editing, and writing, until I have a complete story.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I write scenes that pop into my head. But scenes aren't stories, so I shelve them for later use. I used one of them today. My principal character hangs out at a bar where white wives pick up black studs, and the wife of his best friend comes thru the door. The bar is almost empty and the wife picks up the guy. I plud scenes in where they work.

 

[Kimikimidoll]

I write as if I'm about to die and am I'm trying to get all of my thoughts out of me.

After reading so very much through college and not writing anything but term papers, final exams, and essays, once I graduated, my writing poured out of me like projectile vomit.

Even on my bad days, I never write less than 1,000 words. On my best days, I write about 4,000 words.

I don't understand why it takes some writers a week or longer to compose one sentence. That's not me or my type of writing.

I never do an outline. I usually have the entire story in my head. Then, I go over it and over it, reading, editing, and writing, until I have a complete story.

I understand your purgilistic (yes, not pugilistic) methods. Usually I'm miserable while writing a story. That's why I'm so touchy about my writing too.

 

[SamScribble]

I have spent the greater part of my writing career writing columns and opinion pieces – usually somewhere between 350 and 800 words. Eight hundred words often takes me most of a day. I used to feel bad about this. Until I came across the transcript of an interview with Graham Greene. He reckoned that 500 of the right words was a reasonable day’s work. And (as Annie Lennox would say) who am I to disagree?

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I have spent the greater part of my writing career writing columns and opinion pieces – usually somewhere between 350 and 800 words. Eight hundred words often takes me most of a day. I used to feel bad about this. Until I came across the transcript of an interview with Graham Greene. He reckoned that 500 of the right words was a reasonable day’s work. And (as Annie Lennox would say) who am I to disagree?

In the early 80s this state's word processor allowed as much text space as TWITTER, so full reports were telegraphic. Hemingway blamed newspaper writing for his style.