Yup. My first draft is more like an outline than anything resembling coherent prose. It may contain bits here and there that make it into the final draft more or less intact. (These bits are usually the pivotal points in a scene.)

In a way, I tend to write the way some people paint. I'll do a rough sketch that will get refined and retooled, with washes of color added later, and details put in and tweaked as the whole gets nearer to completion.

Given the amount of knitting, sewing, drawing, etc. that I do, it's no surprise to me that I process my thinking through my hands. If I'm typing (or writing), energizes my creative though processes. Does that make sense?

Yes, it makes a lot of sense. It's just very different to the way I work- which is part of why I'm intrested.

Thank goodness there is not One True Way How To Write, only a myriad of ways that work better or worse for individuals. I personally was much comforted by finding out that Chip Delany says he spends 2-3 times as much time self-editing as he does writing. He can easily spend an hour working on a single page.

Often times, I'll print out a hard copy of a double-spaced first draft, get me a big ol' red pen and go to town on it in a big comfy chair. Then I'll type the whole thing in fresh. There's also the "remove five words from every big paragraph" game. You'd be surprised how many excess words there are when you start looking for them.

Often times, I'll print out a hard copy of a double-spaced first draft, get me a big ol' red pen and go to town on it in a big comfy chair.

I do much the same thing. For some reason, it's easier for me to read my own writing on paper than on screen.

Often times, I'll print out a hard copy of a double-spaced first draft, get me a big ol' red pen and go to town on it in a big comfy chair.

I've tried to do the same thing, but I tend to end up sitting there aruging with myself: do you really need that word?
Yes, I do.
No, I don't.
Yes, it does such-and-such.
But does that need doing...
and so on.

Eventually I get bored, because while there are mistakes that I can fix on a second read or when someone points them out, there aren't that many.

That's when printing out in big fat Courier font really makes sense -- more room for editing marks.

Heck, I might as well admit it. I do very little editing once it's down on paper/electrons. Sometimes a sentence trips my eye, and that tells me the thing needs to be worked on, or I realize--or someone points out!--that who's doing what is unclear. I will write down outlines for future scenes or a plot point that will springboard me into the rest of the story, but generally I just pour the elements I'm trying to work on into the big blender in my head and let everything settle out. I'll peek in every now and then to see how the brewing is going, try to answer any questions they have, or fine tune some choreography (sounds like Moulin Rouge going on up there), but once it's written I do little fiddling.

On the flipside, I have a piece I've written several years ago, and it's getting massive rewrites as I transcribe it into the computer. But that piece is dealing with a lot of mental angst and character development that's going in ugly places, and I wasn't near as comfortable with it back then. Thank you, Buffy, you've taught me how to torture my characters in new and more interesting ways.

I do very little editing once it's down on paper/electrons.

We have a lot in common. I find that only things I've started writing before they're ready need much editing. In some ways, it's a very stress-free way to work (for me, anyway).

Some people write tighter first drafts than others, which is damn annoying to those of us who don't. :-) Me, I've concluded that I'm better off to write a first draft as fast and sloppily as I can, because I lose story-momentum if I stop and dither over word choice (for instance). I can go put my hair up in a bun, put on all black clothing and become Editor-Woman later on, chipping away the verbiage until I have a story-shaped object.

My first draft is more me muttering about character motivation while I drive home. "No, no, there's no good reason for him to be there, why the hell would he walk into the lair of someone who hates him? And dammit, I wanted to kill her off, but it just doesn't make sense!"

That's where it's pulling nails, when I'm trying to work out why the hell they're doing things.