David*Macinnis*Gill.com

Tomor­row marks the one-month inter­val since I desk-drawered my lat­est WIP. I wrote it quickly, sev­eral thou­sand words a day some­times, includ­ing some sig­nif­i­cant revi­sions along the way. When I open the over­sized FedEx enve­lope, y’know the ones that feel like they been glossed with pig fat, I won­der what I’ll find.

Appar­ently, there is a writ­ing method called Fast Draft­ing that’s now en vogue. As far as I can tell, it entails slam­ming through a draft with­out stop­ping to revise, writ­ing your way out of any cor­ners your speedy nar­ra­tive flow gets you into. I did the same thing when I wrote my sec­ond and third nov­els, which are on a disc some­where gath­er­ing elec­trons. Con­sid­er­ing how many fun­da­men­tal revi­sions I had to work through to even make the nov­els read­able, much less saleable (I never sub­mit­ted them to a pub­lisher), I think I’ll take a pass on Fast Draft.

I still write fast. But I reserve the right to stop and retrace my steps when cur­rents go awry and lose the name of action.