TV and film writers sometimes forget that we aren’t the only ones who write draft after draft in our quest for perfection (as opposed to when we write draft after draft to ruin what we’ve written so a stubborn, unappreciative producer will pay our fee). Even the best novelists do the same thing. Studying the various drafts is one of the best ways to learn the craft. Cases in point:
by Hephzibah Anderson
Writers who find themselves mired in procrastination would do well to take a page from Marcel Proust’s most famous book. Specifically, a page from In Search of Lost Time in manuscript form. Nothing more powerfully illustrates the truth of that creative-writing-class maxim, ‘writing is rewriting’, than the liberally crossed-out, lavishly annotated, occasionally doodled-upon notebooks in which Proust composed his seminal, seven-volume text.