A data point about rewriting: the last essay I wrote (http://paulgraham.com/richnow.html ) took 27 days to write, and only one sentence in the final version is the same in the first draft.
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I've been always curious how some authors decide that this version should be the last one. Are there specific quantative metrics to a perfect text or it's more of a "gut feeling"? Went over some essays, but there's nothing there to satisfy this particular curiosity.
For me it's when I can read the whole thing without seeing anything that seems mistaken, incomplete, confusing, or awkwardly put.
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in a different register on this question of when to stop working, i learnt the origins of the phrase: "a poem is never finished, only abandoned" via
@austinkleon. I suspect, a great many novelists and writers feel this way about their work. Might be different for non-fiction.pic.twitter.com/akZt9F6CP1
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WB Yeats on the other hand says, "A poem makes a sound when it is finished like the click of the lid of a perfectly made box.".
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Do you ever change wording after an essay has gone up? I occasionally do this, but as best I can tell, it’s very rare behaviour. Given the nature of web publishing, that’s surprising to me. Back in the 1990s I assumed that many web articles would be revised for years.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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