Among my brain’s many flaws is the complete inability to write a decent first draft.
I write and revise at the same time. I’m doing it right now, since there have already been three versions of the first sentence. A dozen, if I count that I am writing on a tablet today.
Otgerwise, all ny sentenxes woukd lpok like thus.
Once I have a remotely readable, complete rough draft, then I really go to town on it. If I am feeling sane that day, I’ll put the story aside for a time while my mental cache clears out. If not, well, ahoy coffee!
This is actually a good thing: it means I long ago got over the new-artist delusion that my first efforts had to be perfect. It also means I’ve kept the delusion that somehow, some way, I can save every story I’ve ever written, if I just try hard enough. This is obviously not the case. But I have had enough miracles in art and writing that I keep trying.
I got lucky today, with a four-year-old story that I originally wrote for a Lovecraft antho call. It turned out to have more of an A. Merritt/Clark Ashton Smith vibe, two elderly demon hunters, a royal grifter, and a Dustbowl Arizona setting drawn from an actual early territorial newspaper article.
I liked it. Editors liked it, but called into question the cardboard evil seductress who dies at the end…even though she’s a staple trope of the pulp era. It wasn’t until I read more into 1930s Arizona history, and the writing of Thorne Smith (another pulp classic), that I found a better voice and fate for the Bell Maiden of Marble Canyon.
Ah ha, Revision Curse, I have foiled you again!
Well, no. Part of the bad-first-draft curse, for many years, was my tendency to submit stories that were not all they could be. Because I didn’t know better. This one has already been rejected from some of the better markets – all of which do not consider revisions.
But there are other markets just as good. Now I have a story for them.
Ah ha, Revision Curse, I have fought you to a standstill!