Sean said something in the comments on this post that completely blew my mind and I just had to pull it out and unpack it where others can comment. “I, too, see the revision process as a form of “editing”, whereas I think Kelly would think of it as just “writing”” and then Sean talked a little bit about authorial vs. critical modes in writing.
This is so alien to how I see the book process that I just boggled. For me, the whole thing is writing the book. There is no line between my inner editor and my inner author. I write, edit, and even read all from the same part of my psyche, and I don’t think it’s ever occurred to me that there was any other way to do it. The same voice that writes the sentence assesses it before and after and then rewrites and even copyedits.
(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog October 6th 2006. Reposted as part of the reblogging project)
The original post also included these questions, but, as I’ve elected not to enable comments at kellymccullough.com, I’m separating them out below and people’s answers can be found at the Wyrdsmiths version:
Quick survey: Do you compartmentalize your writing processes? Creative and Analytical? Or is it a sort of continuum? Or is it all just in one big box? Or something completely different?