Editing vs. Writing

'The phone rang.' = first draft.

'The quiet exploded in a sudden metallic racket that made everyone in the room nearly leap out of their skin.' = later draft.

The first one is a placeholder to get the idea across so that I can move on with telling the story, and not get bogged down in a single place and forget all about what I should be doing next. What good is spending a bunch of time thinking of the second one if it just ends up cut because that scene or event no longer serves the story I'm telling? (Yes, outlining helps immensely with this, but in my process I've yet to write an outline down to that level of detail. That, and "Things change," I said as I [REDACTED] in my second draft.)

Once I know that I need the phone to ring dramatically, and that it's worth putting more than a few seconds of thought into, I can go back and change it. Look at it, change it. Edit.

My mantra is 'say it better,' but rarely does that happen on the first pass, especially when I'm still feeling out the beats and events of the story. Story comes first, then I refine it into something better, when I know it's going to be in the final story.

I didn't used to be this way, I used to polish as I went, and I never finished anything. I had to change my mindset to do that, which was hard to do, but worth it. See my post entitled 'A Beginning Without an Ending' for more on that.

Or, in quotable form: Find the gold before you start polishing, because scrap iron is still scrap, no matter how shiny it is.