Writing Fast: Can It Really Be Only Utter Crap?

Yzabel / November 18, 2005

I wonder if I’m right in thinking so, or if I am sort of deluding myself with this belief. I know that more than one writer has said that the first million words (or so) an author writes is crap, and I’m ready to swallow this and go on (although I’m probably past the million already given the amount of writing I do, but let’s consider it as a million words of serious novelling, not blog posts, aborted attempts at stories in junior high, and the likes). Now—and this is more specifically related to the “quantity vs quality” argument—can we consider that every word of every sentence of every first draft will always necessarily be crap, regardless of the years of practice a writer has behind her?I explain: writing to me is a skill that, like the others, demand practice to be perfected (I’m leaving creativity and the artistic aspect out of this for the sake of this post). Which leads me to what follows: even when writing fast, even when it’s the word count goal that matters, don’t we progress at some point? Don’t we become able to more or less craft “good” sentences from the start, not all the time, but often enough to differenciate the first draft of an experimented author from that of a beginner?Of course, I don’t consider myself experimented enough to be a good judge in this matter, and this is worth for writing in English even more. However, I know that since I’ve started diving deeper into the technical aspect of the craft, my writing has improved. For instance, I use less adverbs than before (trust me, my earlier writings in English were full of “-ly”, and almost every sentence contained one). There are other little details I notice here and there, that tell me that I have indeed progressed (not throwing “however” in the middle of a sentence is part of them). It’s far from being perfect, but it’s what I consider a good start. Even my posts on this blog are proof of that. Because I write them in two languages, and because I don’t have two hours or more each day to edit and polish my entries, what I post here can be considered as first drafts. A few years ago, these drafts would have ben the edited and polished version, the maximum I was able to do. I don’t doubt that in a couple more years, they will improve again.I agree that writing fast mustn’t be the only way of writing, and that every author will benefit from editing her works. There are days when we’re writing powerhouses, and others when we can’t tell our noses from our bottoms and make typos every two words. It happens. However, to consider that everything that is written “fast” is utter crap? I don’t think so. I cannot believe that no author ever improves in their craft, that the first drafts one writes after the tenth published novel is just as bad as the first unpublished manuscript. There are people who don’t evolve much, alright, but is this true for everyone? When our skills improve, isn’t this reflected in what I’d call our “spontaneous writing” as well?Am I mistaken or not? I don’t know. I may know better in ten years or so, but for now… I’m just left wondering.improvement, quality, writing

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  • Chris Howard

    I think I agree with the million words prep before a writer is able to turn out high-quality creative work. For some it may be half that. They learn quicker, skills come easier. For me, it’s probably more like two million, but I’d include the “aborted attempts at stories in junior high.” Writing is writing. In a sense, every word has a beneficial effect on the writer’s mind. I would add reading as a requirement as well, another million or two words.There are other benefits of writing fast. When a writer has a stockpile of work, other skills, like self-editing and seeing the structure of a story come into play, and get exercised.There’s also something like command of the language, complete familiarity with words and their laws, that enables a writer to push at the edges, or use language in an almost automatic way. I think this is like a musician who has become so familiar with an instrument that he can do just about anything with it, any pattern of notes that comes into his mind, he can get his fingers to play. Unless someone wants to challenge it, I’ll say that a musician is a nearly perfect analog. A musician has to practice, keep his fingers nimble, his muscles adapt in ways that make a guitar, for example, easier to play. A musician starts out spending a lot of time repeating the same boring scales, but at some level, he practices in a more creative way, playing spontaneously, all the time, continuously improving. How much of what he plays when he practices is worth keeping? I would think the more he plays the more he can keep. I think a writer has to practice for the same reasons, to gain that automatized use of the language, which then makes quality fast writing easier.I think some writers (I was like this at some point) are afraid that almost everything they turn out is crap, and so they don’t write unless they’re “in the groove.” Now, I think this fear is unfounded. The more I write, planned or spontaneous, the less I need that perfect mood. Everything doesn’t have to be perfect, creativity flowing, perfect lighting, music, or silence, or whatever I thought was necessary to write well. Now, I just write. All the time. Like you say, it’s not always great writing, but I get better with every word. I’m rarely satisfied, but I can tell when something I write is good enough.A good writer, perhaps, also knows when to stop writing. I’m still having trouble with that one.

  • Yzabel

    Alright, perhaps I should count the half-stories I’ve written when I was 13 (come to think of it, I DID finish a novel at that time… It’s all crappy and absolutely impossible to exploit as it is, but it was finished. Oy, why had I ever forgotten that!).I really like the analogy with the musician. This is why I “force” myself to write now. If I were to wait for the short moments when I have a burst of “in the groove” creativity, I wouldn’t do much. If it was so easy to sit in front of the comp/sheet of paper and crap a perfect novel ready for publishing after three years of break from writing, I think it’d be a known fact (or the work of a genius, who’re pretty rare in this world anyway). The hell, I used to write bits of novels during Latin exams, since I’d always finish before everyone else, and it worked just as well as when I was in my room!

  • Benjamin Solah

    I guess the million words theory is a rough idea, some might get it before, some might take a bit longer.I agree that in time, you may be able to write quick and it not being crap, it’d come with pratice.

  • shaun

    We did an interesting study on this for brighton web design. Check out the stuff about Google.

  • Nikolas

    Sweet 🙂

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