On Writing
Everyone writes a first draft with varying levels of skill.
Mine are ass, generally. A skeleton story told all the way through, but with little supporting detail. I've mentioned this before, but I write in a similar way to musicians who lay down sound in layers, adjusting the level of each instrument as they go.
I always thought that other writers did much of this automatically, without so much conscious intent, but now I'm doubting that. All the symbolism and interlocking themes of your favorite author? It's methodically put into the manuscript. It doesn't happen in the first draft, or the second. It takes a long time.
I once casually dated a writer/audiobook recorder/D-list personality. She was a fine writer, and almost a great one. She claimed to write her novels in one draft, which was inconceivable to me. I could see cracks in her work, though, where another few drafts would have made her text airtight, so maybe she was telling the truth.
For most writers, though, interlocking a story with the accompanying symbols is a painstaking, lengthy process.
I'm going through this in the second section of the book now. I see connections and also where it's lacking connections. Anything that doesn't get used more than once gets thrown away, and I'm sewing together everything that's left.
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