David Louis Edelman has done something quite remarkable, and the result may prove very instructive to beginning writers. As he details on Deep Genre in a post entitled From First to Final Draft: A Case Study, David has posted all nine drafts of the first chapter of his novel Infoquake online. Beginning in 1997 (or 98!) and leading through April 17, 2006, David demonstrates just how much of writing is rewriting.
As David says, “Now the point of posting these drafts is not to dazzle everyone with how wise and witty I’ve become. (Although if anyone is dazzled, I’m enough of an egomaniac to take it, no questions asked.) The point is that I thought writing neophytes might be interested in a behind-the-scenes look at what novelists go through in the revision process. These are the actual drafts of chapter 1, unedited, unaltered from their original versions (except to convert them to HTML, naturally). I’ve also added a few footnotes along the way to give some clue as to what I was thinking as I was revising.
“And what lesson are you writing neophytes supposed to take away from this? Well, the obvious lesson, I guess, but also the most important: don’t give up.”