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Swoopers and bashers
I was sort of surprised to read myself described as a planner by Susan — it reminded me of a passage by Kurt Vonnegut where he describes writers as either swoopers, who write an entire draft at once no matter how badly it turns out, and then go back and revise endlessly, and bashers, who bang out one sentence at a time until it’s right. The unspoken corollary is: writing is rewriting, no matter what your approach is.
(He then goes on to say that most women are swoopers and most men are bashers — which I kind of wonder if he threw in there just to stir shit up.)
I always liked to think I was a swooper, maybe only because the word sounds nicer. But I realized I really am a basher. Well — first of all, in my journal lately I’ve been rewriting paragraphs over and over again. Not crossing them out, just trying them multiple times to see what feels right.
But on a larger scale, I keep writing entrees (as in entrances, not the things that cost $9.49 at Applebee’s) into stories and discarding them. Just the text itself, though. The ideas continue to float around, and perhaps the way I will eventually arrive at a full story is by finding a connection between them, a way to make them all fit together. Because they’re not bad ideas. They just don’t seem to take off the ground yet.
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Chris, I likely have about 25 completed (subject to even further agonized worry and editing) stories while I have about 50 one-liners to 300 words started. I’d love to be able to tie them all together somehow so if you come up with that connection, I’ll be cheering you on.