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Writing continues to transform into a rapid-fire burst of characters that spew out without filters or second thoughts. Get it out, include a link or two and BAM! Your words are on the Web faster than a thundering Emeril (don’t click on this; it’s kind of dumb).
Is this the future of writing?
Fifteen bloody rewrites? Are you a loony?
One thing that stuck in my mind after listening to a recent John Cleese podcast was the idea of drafts or versions of a document. He mentioned doing fifteen (!) drafts on a script. The number of drafts that the episodes of Fawlty Towers that he and Connie Booth went through for each episode is legendary.
In all seriousness, can you ever imagine yourself writing FIFTEEN drafts of a document (unless, of course, you are a professional writer)?
Can you imagine washing your car fifteen times in a row? Making your bed?
Cooking a meal?
OK, bad examples, but do you know what I mean?
Professional writer AND blogger – contrast
Andrew Sullivan, author of The Daily Dish, is a prolific blogger who focuses on short, focused posts including links and quotes to other web pages. I don’t know how much time his average post takes to write, but it doesn’t seem that it would take a long time. These are likely one-draft posts. Blog and go. Apparently they are only 20 minutes apart at times.
By contrast, Sullivan recently provided a well-crafted and thoughtful article about why he blogs. How many drafts did it take him to write that, I wonder?
[Note: podcast with Andrew Sullivan discussing this article is here - MY POST CONTINUES AFTER THE VIDEO]
It takes a village of rewrites to grow a battlestar
Meanwhile, from the Colonial podcast zone, I get the impression that virtually every single episode of the new Battlestar Galactica went through no less than ten drafts, not including scads of minor changes that occurred during filming and editing. Granted, the process of developing screenplays is much, much different than standard documents, mainly because you have to deal with changes that occur when you finally see what your creation looks like in three dimensions.
But still. That is a whole lot of writing.
That’s too complicated for me to write – how about a blog post instead? OR A TXT MSG FTW!
QUESTION: if more and more people keep blogging short bursts of prose on a continual basis, are we gradually going to lose the ability to do the research, analysis, and deep thinking to write traditional long form prose? [EDIT: are we losing the knack for revising, proofing, and editing documents into world-class material? Or are we dealing with a new generation of content creators who don't appreciate the need to EDIT?]
What do you think?
