An observation:
This is a post about writers, for writers. Is it any wonder that the majority of posts so far are about 20 paragraphs long?
Between swooping and plodding, I take a middle line. I like to swoop in the beginning, just get all my thoughts and ideas out there on paper, going back and rereading and reediting as little as possible. Then, at certain intervals, I'll go back and reread, revise, reread some more, and revise yet again. I find that I work best getting my ideas down and trying to reject as few as possible (like brainstorming). When I go through multiple revisions, I can be brutally honest and say "What was I thinking?" and throw out whole chapters if necessary. But if I were to constantly rewrite all the time and agaonize over every sentence and word choice, two things would happen. One: I would never get it finished. I have a short enough attention span as it is. If I wrote as a slow, measured pace, I'd come up with twenty ideas I liked better before the first one was done, and I'd invariably replace one project for the other. Two: I would lose a whole lot of ideas along the way that just came to me on a whim as I was "swooping". True, some deserve to be lost, but that's what the editing process is all about, isn't it?
As far as which is better, I think I've known enough different artists, writers, actors, and musicians to know that everyone has something different that works for them. Plodding brings out the best work in some of you. Others, like me, would only be stifled by this approach.
Writing may be a craft and an art, but it is also a skill, and with any skill, the more work you do and the more you learn about it, the better you get. Many people I know have used their "talent" in some field as almost an excuse NOT to work on their trade. They rely on their talent, on the praise that they get from their peers, and they stop working to improve. Meanwhile, here comes someone who had to work to reach the same level of skill, and because he's used to working, he continues to improve and surpasses the first guy.
As for the earlier poster who is currently in school and believes that it is impossible to learn to write (I believe it was
Heap Thaumaturgist, that you're either born with it or you aren't, I don't buy it. I am a good writer, if what I've been told by people who have read my work is any indication. I have talent in that area. But I guarantee you that there are a lot of people vastly less talented than me putting out work just as good or better than me and getting published, because I lack the discipline to finish most projects that I start. When I was involved in acting, I saw incredibly talented actors easily surpassed in skill by people who had little talent but much more desire.
I believe that writing can be taught, regardless of your talent-level, as long as the desire to learn is there. Any teacher, regardless of the subject, cannot force learning on you. They can only guide you in ways that you can learn for yourself. So the creative writing teacher that has his or her students writing all the time, and then critiques those writings, is trying to guide the students along their path to learning. It is up to the student if he will follow that path or stay where he is at. But to say that no amount of teaching is going to help them (I'm paraphrasing, not quoting) is doing an injustice to the teachers who spend long hours and get paid very little to try and guide the next generation of writers.
There. That post may not have been as long as some of the others, but I believe that it is quite long enough to fit comfortably in this thread.
