These are the first subs made since I've gotten home. Not that I haven't been working, mind. Writing and rewriting takes time.
A lot of people like to quote some of the Golden Age authors and say never rewrite. But as with all advice, you can't quite take it at face value. First, Heinlein, et al, were writing in a very different environment. On the one hand you could actually make a living with short fiction, if you were prolific enough and willing to cross genre boundaries. And on the other, you had editors who edited. I sometimes think that the use of computers to spellcheck and easily revise today, versus retyping a whole story and making carbons, allows many editors to demand really clean manuscripts.
Whether you wish to consider this practical or lazy, I shall leave as an exercise for the reader. But I think it demands to make the cleanest story you can. Remember, your job is to get it accepted, whether it passes through a slush reader or goes direct to the editor. That won't happen if you allow your manuscript to make it easy for an editor to draw the Line Of Death through your story and stop reading.
Second, you cannot blindly accept all writing advice or so-called rules. Some people edit and revise as they write. Others dump as much of the story onto the page as they can and then clean up and fix up later. Me? I nearly always go through revisions, even with some stories which have already been to market. Cuts down on productivity, I suppose, but it makes me happy. And THAT'S the important thing.
Okay, I like selling stories and getting paid and sharing them, too. (double-entry-grin)
Dr. Phil
