{"id":2575,"date":"2011-08-07T21:28:06","date_gmt":"2011-08-08T01:28:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/?p=2575"},"modified":"2011-08-07T21:28:52","modified_gmt":"2011-08-08T01:28:52","slug":"only-one-rule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/?p=2575","title":{"rendered":"only one rule"},"content":{"rendered":"

Orson Welles said that for every film he set out to make, he always made a plan. He always ended up having to discard the plan because of circumstances, but he always made it.<\/p>\n

I think he was onto something, as usual.<\/p>\n

In the comments to this post<\/a> on Tamara Paulin's blog, we were all pledging our fealty to the idea of not rewriting while we're writing the first draft. Then Sonje Jones said, \"Here\u2019s where we differ. I will revise my first draft as I\u2019m writing it.\"<\/p>\n

Tamara's response was: \"Sonje: Stop it! Stop revising while drafting. Notes only. (Unless it\u2019s working, in which case keep doing it.)\"<\/p>\n

Which pretty much says it all about rules for writing (it also made me laugh out loud twice, when I read it at night and again in the morning). As I've said before, I think there's only one real rule, the one I learned from my father: \"Write well.\"<\/p>\n

I had a plan for the draft I'm writing now. I was going to write an entirely new draft, from scratch, since I was making major changes, and then compare it to the first draft.<\/p>\n

That plan lasted for two chapters. The third chapter was turning out rather skimpy, until I realized that most of what belonged in there I had already written. So, I dumped my plan, and started scavenging the first draft for the things I needed.<\/p>\n

Always make a plan, but don't get too attached to it. Never follow a plan or a rule if it starts to interfere with the main rule (above).<\/p>\n

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Orson Welles said that for every film he set out to make, he always made a plan. He always ended up having to discard the plan because of circumstances, but he always made it. I think he was onto something, as usual. In the comments to this post on Tamara Paulin’s blog, we were all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111],"class_list":["post-2575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2575"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2580,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575\/revisions\/2580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}