Rushing things
on May24 2013If you tell two people to paint a chair black, giving one person an hour to do it while giving the other one a week, you’re going to end up with two chairs – one you want to sit on, and one you don’t. Now, in this case, you might not want to sit in one of those chairs because it’s still all tacky and wet, and you’ll ruin your clothing by sitting on it, unless your wardrobe contains as much black as mine does, in which case you’ll probably be fine. However, let’s say that this is really, really fast-drying paint we’re talking about here, and there’s no danger of getting it on your clothing. Would there still be a noticeable difference?
Absolutely, there would. Even with something as simple as painting a chair, you’d be able to tell which one was done in a hurry, and which one had more than enough time to do things properly, thoroughly.
Sometimes ‘quickness’ is an attribute that rolls up into ‘skill’, because it stands to reason that if you’re fast at something you must be good at it. I mean, I’m good at photoshop, and as a result of that, if someone comes to me with two pictures and says ‘Hey, can you combine these two pictures for me? I need them for a PowerPoint presentation I’m going to be sending in an hour.’ I can put together something passable very quickly. They look at it, say ‘Wow, you’re good,’ and then zip off to do their thing.
Give me a week to do that same thing, where I can put as much work into it as I feel is necessary, and the result is usually something they say ‘WOW … you’re *good*!!’ to. They even use two exclamation marks when they say it. I don’t know how they do it, but that’s what they do.
I was asked why I don’t update my stories more quickly on Wattpad (well, technically it was more like a demand to update immediately, but whatever) and the answer is usually a simple one – the chapter’s not ready yet. Even when it’s done, I go through it, then go through it again … finding little replacements to make here and there, stumbling upon bits that sound a tad awkward and need some fixing, all sorts of little tweaks and adjustments before I think ‘Okay, done. For now.’ and post it.
So, in essence, if I updated quicker, readers would be able to tell the difference. And then I’d lose some readers, because they’d be like ‘Ewwww, what the? This isn’t near as good as his last update.’ It’s the fictional equivalent to sitting in a freshly painted chair.
There are those people who can update every day, or every other day, and they’re either full-timing it, or they’re cranking stuff out as quickly as possible, giving little consideration to things like flow, and what word fits the circumstance, and countless other minor things that I consider important. Sure, I’d love to write full-time. Right now, I can’t, and thus my stuff takes a while before it’s ‘ready’.
Because I don’t want my readers seeing me update and thinking it’s a good news/bad news proposition.
Good news: Dinner’s a buffet, and you can have as much as you want!
Bad news: The buffet is different types of manure.
Give each story, each character, each chapter the time it needs. Because while you only get one shot at making a first impression as a writer, you’re only as good as the last impression someone’s formed of you.
