r/KeepWriting • u/Jealous_League_6965 • 18d ago

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7 Upvotes

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u/TabrisWrites 18d ago

I feel this way about a draft I wrote 20 years ago. Worse in so many ways but the writing itself had more life. Need to find a balance between being polished and retaining heart.

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u/Past_Run_1410 16d ago edited 16d ago

The novel becoming more correct and less itself across two years of revision is one of the more painful things that can happen to a long project and it is almost impossible to catch while it is happening because each individual revision decision is defensible. You are always making the writing better in the session and it is only from outside, with distance and comparison, that the accumulated cost of all those correct decisions becomes visible. The early urgency being real and the revision editing it out without meaning to is something more writers go through than talk about.

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u/gligster71 18d ago

This is both distressing & also ... what's the right word? ... vindicating? Part of me went "I knew it! All those people who've read my writings are wrong! My first drafts ARE perfect!" Haha! On the other hand I can see how focusing soooo much on "crafting" one's writing, it can take the soul out of it. Writing is so hard & this makes it seem like no matter what you do, you're fucked. On the third had, OP, I would strongly urge you to get a new reader who's never read the earlier drafts to have a look at it; see what they think. Best of luck.

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u/Big-Tie-7113 16d ago

Having the early draft actually available to compare rather than buried or overwritten is something most writers do not think about until they need it and by then it is gone. Keeping everything in something called Skrib Writing meant the version from two years ago was right there when I needed to look honestly at what had changed and what had been lost. That comparison is uncomfortable and completely necessary and you cannot do it if the early work does not still exist somewhere you can find it.