Toby (or as your typewriter would have spelled it: Tobz), when, in the course of your working process, you scrap the marked up version and grab a blank sheet for the next major iteration, for another from-scratch draft, how does that work physically? Is it just you and the empty paper? Or is the previous manuscript nearby? Are you transcribing the bits you like from the earlier stuff verbatim? Or is that too much of a temptation? How do you get the pace and rhythm of the fresh revision right when there are seven or eight overlapping incompatible rhythms to reference from the previous rounds of editing? When I say “rhythm” I mean it in the most musical sense possible, the way, say, it feels to read DeLillo aloud, the turns, the stops, the DeLilloesque poising. I find in my own writing routine that it’s much easier to land a likable rhythm from a deeper, nearly improvisational, place in my brain than it is to cut and scrape from hunks of past work, even when what’s directly under my fingers is WriterApp > File > New…
God I loved that and needed to hear it
Thanks
Toby (or as your typewriter would have spelled it: Tobz), when, in the course of your working process, you scrap the marked up version and grab a blank sheet for the next major iteration, for another from-scratch draft, how does that work physically? Is it just you and the empty paper? Or is the previous manuscript nearby? Are you transcribing the bits you like from the earlier stuff verbatim? Or is that too much of a temptation? How do you get the pace and rhythm of the fresh revision right when there are seven or eight overlapping incompatible rhythms to reference from the previous rounds of editing? When I say “rhythm” I mean it in the most musical sense possible, the way, say, it feels to read DeLillo aloud, the turns, the stops, the DeLilloesque poising. I find in my own writing routine that it’s much easier to land a likable rhythm from a deeper, nearly improvisational, place in my brain than it is to cut and scrape from hunks of past work, even when what’s directly under my fingers is WriterApp > File > New…