Speed vs. Quality

[sarillia]

Another post inspired by a conversation over on fandomsecrets

How much do you think your writing speed influences the quality of your writing?

It seems to be general knowledge that if you write too quickly then quality will suffer. I haven't really noticed that in my own writing. If I push myself, I can write 4,000 words in an hour and it's not the mess that people picture when I tell them that. I fix typos, I go back and replace sentences I don't like, I do all the things I do when I'm writing just 1,000 words in an hour (a pace that feels very slow to me). I'm just more focused and I do it more quickly.

Have you noticed a difference in what you produce at different speeds?

Comments

[caecilia]

I've noticed that I require a lot of "pre-write" time, where I brainstorm the story in my head. Then when I actually write it, I can bang out a short story in a few hours and it's pretty good! They've been well-received by people in my workshops, anyway. But usually, the ending is rushed. So it would probably be better if I walked away from it for a while and came back to revise it later.

But writing doesn't have to have 5 million drafts and a team of beta-readers the way some people think.

[ljwrites]

Ooh, ditto on pre-write time! I also find the more time I spend thinking over the story first, the more time I save later in editing.

ETA: Still, even with forethought and planning I don't really know the story until I've written it down--I always get surprises along the way--and end up having to fix the first draft quite a bit before I get it to where I like. I guess I'm slow-witted that way.