Drafted

Writing is a process. We go through a series of drafts, & then publish.

Well, that's the way that the industry works - has worked for centuries - so we must do the same thing when we write a blog post, right? Who are you kidding? Draft? An old version? An historical copy of the full state of the document, which is then marked up with changes to be made in the next round of writing? No. Not happening. If I've made a spelling error, I really don't need that on the record, I'm going to just fix it & move on (assuming it isn't done for me automatically). I don't need interim copies, just in case I lose something. In fact, I don't mind losing some parts - whole sentences or paragraphs - because I can very quickly write it all again, without worrying about running out of ink or typewriter ribbon - or in fact needing to cut a new quill.

The process of writing has changed, but we use the same terms to describe the process, in the same way that airline schedules still look like railway schedules, even though we've added several dimensions to the technology & there's no potential for a slower plane to be run into because it makes more stops along the same route. Yes, even that made no sense.

Drafting, though, is a process that is increasingly misunderstood. Once upon a time - not all that long ago, really - writing something long hand (first draft) & then correcting with a different coloured pen would lead to a second draft, simply because the combination of the original & corrected versions (lines or words) wasn't at all clear. Often, it was easier to rip out a paragraph & rewrite it to get a better sense of what was meant all together. You might target a chapter at a time, because collections of loose pages are just unwieldy. You don't do that now. You simply fix what you need to anywhere at any time. You don't go through the laborious process of creating a 'fair copy' (typing from handwritten notes) so that the publisher has half a chance to correct your spelling. You do that in situ. Your first draft should already be effectively a fair copy ... which is unnecessary.

Now you have the opposite problem - you've corrected things as you went, so do you even need to think of another draft? Of course you do, but the best way to get one is to effectively look at what you have & decide how to rewrite it better. The old way forced you to rewrite it. The new way says that you have the words right there in front of you, so you only need to change the bits that don't work. It makes you think that the fair copy of the first draft is so very close to a final version that it just needs a few tweaks - not in terms of grammar, because that's already done, but in terms of ... creativity or inspiration or word choice (grab a thesaurus), or some such that doesn't need another set of eyes to make suggestions, because there's all this automated stuff that can do it for you.

You are, in fact, an idiot.

Draft. This blog post will go from 'draft' (singular) to 'published' (past tense) at the click of a button. It's so easy, so tempting, & it's a struggle to resist that step that makes this real. It's a struggle to not assume that all of the automated things have helped me get to that point, such that I have reached perfection without any enlightenment, & everything, as it stands, will just be