Quality or Quantity?

Hey y'all! A couple weeks ago, I posted about how to up your productivity, and when I was writing that, the measure of "productivity" I had in mind was word count. But sheer volume of words isn't the only thing that matters when you're writing. What you're really working towards is high-quality content. So, the big question is:

Does writing faster (or in greater volumes) reduce the quality of what you write?

As with most writing questions, there isn't one straight, clear-cut answer. It's a balance.

I'm a big believer in first drafts. Getting the whole story down in its messiest form, without worrying about editing yet, is an incredibly freeing experience. The first draft experience is different for everyone. For example, everyone's process is unique. Some people laboriously plot out their stories down to scene-level, determining every detail before they start writing. Others take a handful of elements--characters, settings, scene ideas--or maybe a premise, and wing it from there. Some take an in-between route.

Another difference in drafting is how long it takes to complete this earliest version of the story. For a full-length novel, it could take anywhere from a month (any NaNoWriMo winners out there?) to years. And that's okay. Writing is an art, after all, and artists have a certain amount of creative freedom. What really matters is this: Is there a distinctive difference in quality between the stories of lightning-fast pantsers and plodding plotters?

I don't think there necessarily has to be. The trade-off in speed lies not in quality, but in time spent editing.

You've probably heard the famous quote (and I might've posted it here...) by Saul Bellow that you never have to change anything that got up in the middle of the night to write. I hope you've had the thrilling experience of being struck by a brilliant idea at some ungodly hour and furiously scribbling the whole scene in horrible handwriting, then immediately passing out face-first in your notebook and waking up with inkstains on your face. It's glorious; you've created something from whole cloth; you feel like the next Tolkien or Rowling; and you read over it in rapture daily for about a week.

Here's the thing. After several re-readings, that scene starts to look less like the shiny diamond it was in the dark, and more like an ugly lump of stone. You need to cut this raw gem into the beautiful jewel you know it could be. You need to edit. But because you weren't in the most lucid state when you wrote the dang thing, you might have trouble remembering your original vision or even why this scene was so vital to the story in the first place.

Or take for example the eternal plague of beginning writers. You suddenly get a new idea for an epic fantasy series full of light, dark, dragons, maidens, magic, warriors, excellent moral themes, and a perfect final battle scene. You dive in, write about three chapters, and burn out, having forgotten your beautiful vision in the nitty-gritty of putting words on paper. You took things way too fast. You started writing without the faintest idea of what you were doing, and now you've reached a dead end before you even began, and your dreams are dying in some fantasyland gutter full of rats. Those three chapters will forever languish in a file-folder full of similarly abandoned story ideas.

The hard truth is, your story idea might've been brilliant. But in your eagerness, you hit the hyperdrive too soon. If your idea was really that good, it's likely you can make it work--but those chapters will have to undergo some serious editing (if you don't scrap them entirely) to make the story work.

Speed itself isn't a quality-destroying menace. You can write very quickly (or without an outline... or at odd times of night...) and still come out of the deal with a brilliant masterpiece. But in my personal experience, the faster you go (and the less you think), the longer you'll be editing to fix problems you could've dealt with before the story even began. Taking it slow and using forethought might make life easier in the long run.

Okay, smarty-pants, you ask, putting your hands on your hips. Then what was the point of that post two weeks ago about increasing your productivity?

Different people need different things. Some people really struggle to get any words on the page. Procrastination is a real issue for those who haven't made a habit out of productivity. Low-quality (or rather, high-maintenance) writing is better than no writing at all.

Other people don't struggle with that. You might write a lot every day, but you feel your quality leaves something to be desired. That older post isn't targeted at you, but this one is. Different problems require different principles--just another example of how most writing questions don't have easy answers.