Question by kxaltli: How many drafts does your writing go through before its “finished”?
I’m obsessive about drafts, and I usually have at least three drafts finished before I ask for other people to proof my writing (maybe two or three people).
Most of the time I end up with five or six drafts before I consider the piece finished, though I’ve had a couple that have only gone through three or four before I’m satisfied.
Just curious as to the tendencies of others regarding this aspect of writing.
Note: I put “finished” in quotation marks because I don’t find any piece of writing to ever be completely finished- there are almost always little things to tweak.
I’m not talking about grade school /or/ highschool level English class quality.
If it helps any- I usually go though a lot of drafts for a few different reasons-
It makes my writing stronger- I almost always finish my first draft in a maximum of 1-3 sittings. There are a lot of mistakes, things that need fixing, parts that need trimming, parts that need to be extended.
I go through twice to check for spelling and grammatical errors- I keep both versions so I can see what work I’ve done.
Then I hand copies of the same version over to two or three people for mark ups, critique and suggestions.
I revise and give them to two other people to look at.
They give me suggestions.
I revise again. Usually I do a final proof to catch grammatical, punctuation and spelling errors. Like missing the apostraphe in the word “it’s” in the question.
Just a little run through. I’m not lacking confidence in my writing- I enjoy showing it to others.
Best answer:
Answer by darcey
about 5 drafts
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!