The adulating portrait of the perfect writer who never blots a line comes express mail from fairyland—John McPhee
A good
friend, a non-writer, told me about an article he read in the New Yorker. As a
result, he’s come to a new respect for writers. Draft
No. 4 by staff writer John McPhee is such a rich piece that I might use it
as it inspiration for a week worth of blog posts.
The title comes from McPhee’s revelation that it at least takes four drafts of everything he writes. McPhee also has a four-to-one formula. His first draft takes four times as long to write than the second, third and four drafts combined.
He suggests that, when confronted with writers’ block, take what you are writing and turn it into a letter to your mother. When you have finished, take away the salutation and the signature and you have the first draft, however rough it is.
Although the time spent in front of the keyboard in successive drafts is only one quarter of the first draft creation time, this is where the real work begins—in the mind.
… your mind is knitting at the words. You think if a better way to say something, a good phrase to correct certain problem. Without the drafted version—if it did not exist—you obviously would not be thinking of things that would improve it. In short, you may actually be writing on two or three hours a day, but your mind, one way or another, is working on it twenty-four hours a day—yes, while you sleep—but only if some sort of draft or earlier version already exists. Until it exists, writing has not really begun.
Writers work 24/7, and probably 365. This is a tough job.
See ya’ later.
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