My logic is most of the writers who influenced me wrote on typewriters, often under tight deadlines, and I don't think they changed every little thing that bugged them (like Teresa seems to be suggesting). Yet their work doesn't seem lousy just because they didn't nitpick as much as we can today. Although it's at odds with the advice from writers I've never heard of, it seems to me many of the writers I love (Asimov, Ellison, Pohl, Bester, PKD) actually wrote more than they rewrote.
Yes, many writers who wrote in the days of typewriters did produce fine work on short deadlines. Whether they were forced to pass over things that bothered them, in order that they might meet those deadlines, or whether they had learned their craft so well that they were able to produce work that satisfied them without the necessity of writing numerous drafts (as a writer less experienced and skilled would need to do in order to produce work of similar quality) ... that's another matter. But the truth is that many of those same writers wrote, along with the good books we remember today, any number of books that were so mediocre (or worse) that they are mercifully forgotten. This, along with all of the trunk novels some of them wrote while they were learning their craft, bad books that were never published at all. And, of course, the pseudonymous potboilers some of them wrote on even shorter deadlines in order to support themselves in the intervals between working on the books that really mattered to them.
So the question is: How many bad books would each of us be willing to write before finally writing one that is good enough to be published and fondly remembered, or would we rather work on fewer books and try to make each one the best that it can be? For each writer the answer will be a different one, and either way may lead to success ... or failure ... depending on talent, luck, the ability to keep learning from each new effort, and dedication. Even the best books may never be published if the timing isn't right, and even mediocre books may be published and even, perhaps, successful, if the timing is perfect. But with the books that are never published, or if published never find favor with readers, how do we know if this was because of poor timing or because we stopped one draft short of the book that would have been successful? We can't know. All we can know is whether we had set high standards for ourselves and did everything in our power at the time to try and meet them.
And here is another thing to consider: Back when we were all writing our books on typewriters, it took an immense amount of dedication even to write a bad book and finish it. As a result, the number of books being written at all were fewer. There was less competition, and along with that, there were editors willing to work for months or years helping a writer to polish something that was rough but showed promise. Now that just about every living person on planet Earth has access to a computer and word processing program, the number of novels being produced each year is
stupendous. Some of those books will be so bad, they can't really be counted as competition. Others will be mediocre, but the writer will, either by luck or inspiration, have latched on to an idea that hits just exactly the right chord with the public at that moment in time, so that the flaws won't matter. And other books, or course, will be very, very good.
The books in those last two categories are our competition. I've said this many times before (so those who have been there when I said it, please bear with me): We can never depend on writing that lucky book that is the one the public is secretly longing for. To hang our hopes on writing that book is not realistic. Realistically, we need to write books that can compete with the very best. And those very best books are not going to be novels where the writers left things in that bothered them because they didn't think it was worth their time to go back and fix them. Those books are going to be highly polished.
That is the reality in the 21st century. And since we are writing our books in the 21st century, we need to be aware of those realities and not look for career advice to writers who established themselves more than half a century ago.
I think Heinlein said to refrain from rewriting unless an editor asks
But there, you see, is one of the differences between then and now. When a book is submitted by a debut author and the book needs work, the editor almost certainly
won't ask. The editor will just reject the book, usually without commenting on where it needs work. If a new writer makes a practice of waiting for an editor to ask before doing revisions, he or she is likely to be kept waiting forever.
