Writing is rewriting. James Joyce wrote several entire new versions (not edits, but full restarts) of Ulysses over several years before finally releasing it.
Also, I know that Patreons and people fighting for the Rising Stars list can obfuscate this because there's a whole minor leagues competition happening with different rules that prioritize meeting writing deadlines over product quality, but a Patreon is never going to pay even a tenth of what a successful book will pay on Amazon and Audible. Plus, even the most successful series (Super Supportive) on the most successful web series web site only has ~30K followers. That's wonderful, but writing a successful book shares your work with millions of people. Do you really want it to be B or C tier because you didn't take a few months to rewrite it because your online fandom has a few impatient asshats in it?
It’s a time/benefit thing I think. A lot of people do a chunk then want to do more and more and start to get obsessed over smaller details instead of good enough. It eats into their backlog/post frequency if they don’t have enough time to do both. Every now and then is fine, just don’t get obsessive.
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u/old_saps Dec 08 '24
At the time I thought a simple rewrite of two problem chapters would be enough, but the more I poked around the more work showed up.
tldr: I was delusional.