Oh the archness. Do people hate us for doing this?

I wasn't smart enough to understand your email, with the harry potter and the timezones and the too-much-coffee, not-enough-sleep.

I have to go to the shops. Give me 20 minutes.

Thanks for the help, everyone. I'm really terrible at these application essays. College was easy, because most of them were just "describe a significant event in your life" or something, and I could just revise things I'd already written for writing classes, but these are much harder. I'm working on rewriting now.

I don't think you're terrible at all, Hil. It read well, but it needs revision, that's all, and a fresh eye.

It's not being able to write that makes great writers, it's being able to re-write.

It's not being able to write that makes great writers, it's being able to re-write.

Worth repeating here, and I'm going to put it in COMM too. My non-casual writing took a great leap forward when I learned how to do this, the most valuable thing I learned from workshopping other people's work.

Glad you agree, 'Dosia.

I suppose it is just possible that somewhere there's a writer who doesn't revise much, who produces a book where the first draft and the published draft are only a few words different, but that's either not a very careful writer or a freak of nature.

People will also tell you to let a piece of writing "cool off" in a drawer for a period of time before you go back to it. The longer the piece, the more cooling off it needs.

And there's an Australian author who writes like this: she does the first draft on computer, then she prints it out, then she deletes the files from the computer and forces herself to re-write from the printout, because that way she forces the discipline of reconsidering every sentence, every word, on herself.

If I did that, I think the stress would kill me. Maybe that's just me though.

If I did that, I think the stress would kill me.

Me too, I think. For a start I'd be insanely paranoid that the printer had skipped a page or something like that.

I'd, like, print five copies, send one to a friend, put one in a safe, keep another at work, etc.

But you've got to admit, her approach has got a kind of hardass martial-arts/miltary prove-your-committment kind of thing going on.

Yep. Definitely bad to the bone.

People will also tell you to let a piece of writing "cool off" in a drawer for a period of time before you go back to it. The longer the piece, the more cooling off it needs.

I've found I usually need a "hot" draft before I put it aside - by the time I've finished, I always have a list of things that need changing. But everybody's different.

Is this just me(?): have you noticed how stories have this way of "setting"? When I write things, edits I do on the fly are like working with syrup. When I do the hot draft, it's thickened to peanut butter. A few months later, when I come back to it, it's like chipping and polishing concrete.

I suppose one could call that the "distance" your mind gets over time.

Can't imagine retyping a whole manuscript from paper, though. I have nightmares about that sort of thing.

The current piece I'm transcribing for another fandom is on about two inches of paper. I'm with the Australian lady, retyping everything is forcing me to rethink everything. I also have to keep reminding myself that the audience for htat pieces doesn't see as much NC-17 stuff or even really hard R, so I have to turn the dials down a little. This is for violence, as much as for sex, but I've gotten them to let stuff in they might not otherwise do, because the explicitness was absolutely necessary.