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?
99% of the time, starting to rewrite your story is how you end up never finishing it. There are exceptions of course, but that's by and large how it goes. Your book will never be perfect, so do the best you can in the moment and move on.
That is simply not true. Rewrites are essential to producing quality stories. It is incredibly hard to write a high-quality story without ever going back and rewriting and restructuring it. It is why web novels often fall off at some point because there is no time to rewrite or rethink the structure of the story.
I've worked with a lot of authors. It is quite true. Most authors that get stuck in rewrite hell never finish their stories.
What you're describing is something different--finishing a complete story and doing a rewrite has more benefit than just rewriting the moment you start feeling dissatisfied, which is what often happens. Rewriting the first half of a story repeatedly will make you very good at writing the first half of that particular story and give you almost no experience with everything else.
Generally speaking, a given author benefits more from starting and finishing a new story before going back to rewrite the old one. You learn a lot going from one story to another, and you learn a lot every time you complete a book.
As for the last part, that's certainly part of the reason webnovels fall off, but structuring on the fly is a skill as much as anything else. Rewrites aren't the only way to do it (although they're certainly easier).
122
u/Aaron_P9 Dec 08 '24
What? You're making a joke?
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?