Tags
bite size, bite-sized, creative writing, edit, editing, re-write
Yesterday, as I was coming to the end of my daily 1,000 word target, my computer went into full meltdown. I’m not just talking about your usual screen-freezing, switch it off and on again problem, I mean full-on blue screen of death. Lucky for me, I save a backup-of my work daily on the cloud and a USB stick, so I knew the bulk of my work was safe, but when I finally managed to bring my laptop back from the brink of death, my 1,000 words were gone. What a nightmare.
This image haunts my dreams.
-Image by yum9me
I could remember roughly what I’d written, of course, and I still had a few key phrases in my head, which I quickly jotted down before they slipped away, and then I set to work re-writing. I shouldn’t really have been surprised at this, but my new 1,000 words came out way better than the first. I already had a detailed idea of what I wanted from the scene and now I had the chance to refine it on the second try.
This whole thing really revealed to me just how useful it can be to re-write from scratch. Usually, even if I don’t like what I’ve written, I’m inclined to do a heavy edit rather than scrapping my work and starting over, but I guess this goes to show that there really is some benefit to the occasional re-write.
Where do you stand? Is it better to edit or re-write?
pilesofpages 
Oh, I’ve had that problem too once before. I was devastated because I usually don’t write 1,000+ words a day – hell, at times I’m glad if I can wring out 500. So when it all disappeared I was in shock. That shock then turned into a frenzy to write down what I still remembered. I don’t remember if they actually came out better the second time, but I do know the word count was higher than the first time. But it nearly stopped my heart and I hope never to have to go through that again.
I can’t decide which is better: editing or rewriting. I just know they’re both important.
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That moment of panic when you realise that your work had disappeared is horrible! It could drive a person to throw their laptop out of the window.
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I seriously contemplated doing that for a few seconds. But luckily I changed my mind 😉
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