Rule 17 Writing Question

[prisoner_24601]

Since I'm always curious about other people's creative process and how they write, I thought I'd ask the other fic writers on this community how much editing and trimming do you do to your work? Do you edit and trim at all? Write a first draft and then are finished? How much of your stuff ends up on the figurative cutting room floor? I'm wondering if other writers love to edit and pick at stuff the way I do or if they have an entirely different way of writing.

I know that for me, I'm a huge fan of Strunk & White's Rule 17 (Omit needless words) and that most of the time, I tend to do as much work editing, trimming and cutting my fics as I do on the actual first draft. And I've definitely had stories where my betas (or myself) have chopped huge parts out and trimmed the dialogue, etc... to pick up the pacing and the rhythm of the fic, and always my stories seem better for it.

So tell me your creative process because I'd love to know!

Comments

[niniane]

I (sometimes) have hypergraphia as well, and can do the same thing. That said, for me, it's never very good, and tends to require a lot of editing. Like, hypergraphia for me is great in that it gets the stuff on the page...but not so great in that I often need to edit it a *lot* before it's presentable. I'm envious that it works so well for you!

I think we all get a bit insecure at times. But I have found as I write that I slowly get better at going "OK, this is me being insecure" vs. "this is me being self-aware". (If that makes sense...) At least I think I am. I'm probably wrong half the time, which is why I love my betas!

[1smut_princess]

I wish I could do that.... Frankly posting at all is an act of willpower.

[niniane]

Yeah, it really can be. I am in a mood right now where I want to tear 3/4 of what I've written off the web and burn it.

That said, I just tell myself "it's only fan fiction" and let it remain.

...although maybe I'll rip some of it up, anyway. ;)

[1smut_princess]

:huggles:No tearing it up! Trust me, I've done it, and now I wish I hadn't. I like to go back and look at my oldest stuff and compare it to what I write now, and I find it is one of the few things that bolsters me. (Other than reviews of course but that goes without saying)
But I'm missing like I dunno...20 stories total that I can't go back and compare to, because in a fit of pique I deleted them from all the archives, and my fiancée of the time wound up formating the harddrive on the computer shortly there after.... which results in - lost stories.

[niniane]

Eh, I wouldn't remove them permanently. Just put them back in my archive where no one else can see them. ;)

It's a bit sad when my justification for not doing this is that some have a fair number of comments (OMG, fandom, what are you thinking?) and I figure that no matter how awful, in fandom *someone* will like them...

[1smut_princess]

Tooooo true.

[niniane]

It really is. Although then I worry that someone who reads one thing I write will wander into my collection of stories and be like "OMG, WTF? This stuff stinks!" Which makes me think that I need to tear through everything I've written and remove the crappiest parts. I kind of want a warning like "Some of these fics are not very good. I have put a star by the ones that are. Please ignore the others."