Keeping The Drafts

Yzabel / September 25, 2005

My previous post about chapters overhaul made me wonder if many other writers do that—keeping their drafts?I’ve noticed that I tend to do that a lot, not to force them into a manuscript later on, not in the hopes of using them for something else, but simply as memories, so to say. I file them into “old drafts” folders, and months or years later, I’m always glad to be able to read them again. These aren’t necessarily short drafts; sometimes, they’ll be entire chapters that I’ve rewritten, or that I’ve decided to not integrate at all into the story anymore. There’s a stash of short stories in these folders as well, of course.I’m not sure why I do that. Perhaps I don’t like the idea of losing weeks’ worth of work, or perhaps I appreciate being able to reflect on my former ways of writing, to see how I’ve evolved. I get this feeling very often when I take back texts I’ve typed in English four or five years ago: it allows me to realize how much I’ve improved since then, and this is an interesting thing.I’ve already wondered if I just shouldn’t trash these drafts completely, in order to not get “influenced” by them in any case, but I know I’d regret it in a few years from now, since I always do.Maybe I’m just some kind of weird collector when it comes to this!drafts, writing

FILED UNDER : Writing & Stories

TAG :

Comments

  • melly

    Oh, boy. Touchy subject here. I keep Everything. All my drafts.Why? That’s the question, right?I think I’m afraid of losing a piece of writing. A better piece of writing. Maybe it has to do with a lot of self doubt. Who know?However, it happened to me once or twice that after a few revisions I went back to the original draft and used that one. So it’s a good thing I kept it.I like how you put it – a collector.

  • Cavan

    I have everything (and I write a lot of drafts in notebooks, so it takes up a bit of space) that I’ve written in the past few years.Actually, I’m really angry at myself for not having kept all the stuff I was writing when I was 13-16. From time to time, I get the urge to look back on it.

  • Jennifer

    You want to see the piles of trees I’ve killed? I never toss a single sheet unlil the project/novel is finally done…and even then it sits around taking up space for a long time after and evetually I start to get the next project piling up and only then do I hit the shredder. And that’s just because I REALLY need the space for the new stuff.

  • Elvira Black

    I used to save all my drafts, and they were legion, because when I started freelancing I went through so many drafts until I got to the finished product it was downright scary. When I did book reviews (300 words for a 300 page book–like one word per page–lol) I especailly wanted to make sure every word chosen was le? mot juste–as if it were a poem. In this way, I almost always avoided the slings and arrows of an outrageous editor, and my stuff was printed as is. (It also helped that I had a lot of copyediting experience). Now I’ve become much more laissez faire about it all, in part because the only writing I do now is blog-related.

  • Yzabel

    Melly — I must say I’ve had these fears at times, too: “what if I lose a better piece of writing?” Most of the time it’s not the case at all, of course, and the revision is always much better, but… I guess it never harms to keep the first draft “just in case of”.

  • Yzabel

    Cavan — Hear, hear! Hell, there are things I’ve written when I was 9-10 that I deeply regret not having kept, even though I know the writing was awful and the story crappy. For that matter, I’ve also lost my very first comics, one that I drew when I was 6 (hey, I was proud of being able to write something else than my own name only!). Nostalgic people like me should really never throw anything away, I suppose.

  • Yzabel

    Jennifer and Elvire — Now I suppose we should be grateful for the computer tool, since it at least prevents us from stacking entire piles of drafts on paper everywhere? 😉

  • Pat Kirby

    When revising, if I hack out a chunk of writing that I like, but just isn’t suited to the story…I copy/paste it in a scraps file. (This pertains only to my novel/series work.)I print on both sides of the paper to save money, so I keep a draft if the printing’s only on the first side. If, however, I’ve incorporated all necessary changes, etc., and can’t use the paper, into the recycle bin it goes.

  • paper shredder

    I almost always avoided the slings and arrows of an outrageous editor, and my stuff was printed as is

Comments are closed.