Writing is rewriting, some evidence

Instead of doing NaNoWriMo this year (and I bet you're all glad you've been spared the wordcount updates) I decided to edit the novel I was partway through this time last year. Except, as we all know, editing isn't as much fun as writing. You don't get the feelgood factor of watching the wordcount build, ticking off the chapter list in your outline or moving closer to that crucial scene. What you do get is self-doubt, the dispiriting task of deleting the only bit of dialogue you were completely happy with (but you've changed the plot and it no longer makes sense), and the dreadful feeling of finishing the session with fewer pages than you started out with. Keep going like that and you'll have nothing left, right? And everyone else manages to get it pretty much spot on first time, right?

Well, just to cheer us up Eddie Robson has written a fabulously useful article on the BBC Writersroom blog, about the various drafts his script for Welcome to Our Village, Please Invade Carefully went through before it was recorded (as I write this, there's a few episodes available on the iplayer - it's a sitcom about an alien observation of a small village as they try to decide whether to invade. It's got Peter Davison in). Not only is there an explanation of how he went from one draft to the next, but they're all available to download so you can study the differences. He also points out all the problems with the scripts as the drafts progress, which is encouraging to say the least - this reminded me of David Almond's comment at the Ilkley Literature Festival last month that finished books are an illusion to make you think the author has a perfect mind (read my review of his visit here).

Obviously I was in no way procrastinating by reading all of this stuff. The fact that I haven't done as much editing as planned is just my usual lack of organisation.