When it comes to writing, I am a "primitive." I had had no instruction when I began to write, or even by the time I had begun to publish. I took no courses. I read no books on the subject.
This was not bravado on my part, or any sense of arrogance. I just didn't know that there were courses or books on the subject. In all innocence, I just thought you sat down and wrote. Naturally, I have picked up a great deal about writing in the days since I began; but in certain important respects, my early habits imprinted me and I find I can't change.
Some of these imprinted habits are trivial. For instance, I cannot leave a decent margin. Editors have tried begging and they have tried ordering, and my only response is a firm "Never! "
When I was a kid, you see, getting typewriting paper was a hard thing to do for it required m-o-n-e-y, of which I had none. Therefore what I had, I saved-single-spaced, both sides, and typing to the very edge of the page, all four edges. Well, I learned that one could not submit a manuscript unless it was double-spaced on one side of the page only; and I was forced, unwillingly, to adopt that wasteful procedure. I also learned about margins and established them-but not wide enough. Nor could I ever make them wide enough. My sense of economy had gone as far as it would go and it would go no farther.
More important was the fact that I had never learned about revisions. My routine was (and still is) to write a story in first draft as fast as I can. Then I go over it, and correct errors in spelling, grammar, and word order. Then I prepare my second draft, making minor changes as I go and as they occur to me. My second draft is my final draft. No more changes except under direct editorial order and then with rebellion in my heart.
I didn't know there was anything wrong with this. I thought it was the way you were supposed to write. In fact when Bob Heinlein and I were working together at the Navy Yard in Philadelphia during World War II, Bob asked me how I went about writing a story and I told him. He said, "You type it twice?
Why don't you type it correctly the first time?"
I felt bitterly ashamed; and the very next story I wrote, I tried my level best to get it right the first time. I failed. No matter how carefully I wrote, there were always things that had to be changed. I decided I just wasn't as good as Heinlein.
But then, in 1950, I attended the Breadloaf Writers' conference at the invitation of Fletcher Pratt.
There I listened in astonishment to some of the things said by the lecturers. "The secret of writing," said one of them, "is rewriting."
Fletcher Pratt himself said, "If you ever write a paragraph that seems to you to sing, to be the best thing you've ever written, to be full of wonder and poetry and greatness-cross it out, it stinks! "
Over and over again, we were told about the importance of polishing, of revising, of tearing up and rewriting. I got the bewildered notion that, far from being expected to type it right the first time, as Heinlein had advised me, I was expected to type it all wrong, and get it right only by the thirty-second time, if at all.
I went home immersed in gloom; and the very next time I wrote a story, I tried to tear it up. I couldn't make myself do it. So I went over it to see all the terrible things I had done, in order to revise them. To my chagrin, everything sounded great to me. (My own writing always sounds great to me.)
Eventually, after wasting hours and hours-to say nothing of spiritual agony-I gave it up. My stories would have to be written the way they always were-and still are.
What is it I am saying, then? That it is wrong to revise? No, of course not-any more than it is wrong not to revise.
You don't do anything automatically, simply because some "authority" (including me) says you should. Each writer is an individual, with his or her own way of thinking, and doing, and writing. Some writers are not happy unless they polish and polish, unless they try a paragraph this way and that way and the other way.
Once Oscar Wilde, coming down to lunch, was asked how he had spent his morning. "I was hard at work," he said.
"Oh?" he was asked. "Did you accomplish much?" "Yes, indeed," said Wilde. "I inserted a comma."
At dinner, he was asked how he had spent the afternoon. " More work, " he said. "Inserted another comma?" was the rather sardonic question.
"No," said Wilde, unperturbed. "I removed the one I had inserted in the morning."
Well, if you're Oscar Wilde, or some other great stylist, polishing may succeed in imparting an ever-higher gloss to your writing and you should revise and revise. If, on the other hand, you're not much of a stylist (like me, for instance) and are only interested in straightforward storytelling and clarity, then a small amount of revision is probably all you need. Beyond that small amount you may merely be shaking up the rubble.
I was told last night, for instance, that Daniel Keyes (author of the classic "Flowers for Algernon") is supposed to have said, "The author's best friend is the person who shoots him just before he makes one change too many."
Let's try the other extreme. William Shakespeare is reported by Ben Jonson to have boasted that he "never blotted a word." The Bard of Avon, in other words, would have us believe that, like Heinlein, he got it right the first time, and that what he handed in to the producers at the Globe Theatre was first draft.
(He may have been twisting the truth a bit. Prolific writers tend to exaggerate the amount of nonrevision they do.)
Well, if you happen to be another Will Shakespeare, or another Bob Heinlein [Mr. Heinlein now admits to two or three drafts on his longer works.-Ed], maybe you can get away without revising at all. But if you're just an ordinary writer (like me) maybe you'd better do some. (As a matter of fact, Ben Jonson commented that he wished Will had "blotted out a thousand," and there are indeed places where Will might have been-ssh!-improved on.)
Let's pass on to a slightly different topic.
I am sometimes asked if I prepare an outline first before writing a story or a book. The answer is: No, I don't.
To begin with, this was another one of those cases of initial ignorance. I didn't know at the start of my career that such things as outlines existed. I just wrote a story and stopped when I finished, and if it happened to be one length it was a short, and if it happened to be another it was a novelette.
When I wrote my first novel, Doubleday told me to make it 70,000 words long. So I wrote until I had 70,000 words and then stopped-and by the greatest good luck, it turned out to be the end of the novel.
When I began my second novel, I realized that such an amazing coincidence was not likely to happen twice in a row, so I prepared an outline. I quickly discovered two things. One, an outline constricted me so that I could not breathe. Two, there was no way I could force my characters to adhere to the outline; even if I wanted to do so, they refused. I never tried an outline again. In even my most complicated novels,
I merely fix the ending firmly in my mind; decide on a beginning; and then, from that beginning, charge toward the ending, making up the details as I go along.
On the other hand, P. G. Wodehouse, for whose writings I have an idolatrous admiration, always prepared outlines, spending more time on them than on the book and getting every event, however small, firmly in place before beginning.
There's something to be said on both sides of course.
If you are a structured and rigid person who likes everything under control, you will be uneasy without an outline. On the other hand, if you are an undisciplined person with a tendency to wander allover the landscape, you will be better off with an outline even if you feel you wouldn't like one.
On the third hand, if you are quick-thinking and ingenious, but with a strong sense of the whole, you will be better off without an outline.
How do you decide which you are? Well, try an outline, or try writing without one, and find out for yourself.
The thing is: Don't feel that any rule of writing must be hard and fast, and handed down from Sinai. Try them all out by all means; but in the last analysis, stick to that which makes you comfortable. You are, after all, an individual.