Gray – The revising thing is a process difference. For me, it’s a lot easier to fix something that’s already there than it is to come up with the stuff and get it down on paper in detail in the first place. Right now, for instance, I know what happens next in general – the scene with big brother #1 about X, followed by the scene with Y in which Z happens, followed by dinner with A, B, and C in which plot thread Q gets picked up again, then back to Y to wrap up this plot section. That should be at least two or three chapters’ worth, but getting it all down on paper is like pulling teeth. Once it’s on paper, fixing it is usually faster and easier. Other writers (like you) have a much easier time piling up words in the first place, but fixing them is a drag.

The one alien notion to me is ‘revising as not writing’. For me, the original composition is quite often the easy stuff. Where it needs serious revising at all, it needs it to turn it from typing into dramatic truth – and that’s the hard part of converting my fantasies into a story.

So now I do wordcount in revisions, when they’re extensive enough to be done by actual re-writing. Where they’re more in the nature of editing – no, me neither.