[robbrown451]

All I can say is, I am old enough that I remember when writing rough drafts, by hand, on paper, was how you did writing. If you changed your mind right after you wrote something, it was awful because you had to squeeze it in between the lines or in the margins or draw circles and arrows and such.

I hated writing then. It was just painful. I procrastinated any writing assignment till 2am the night before it was due.

Now I love writing. Writing is often something I do when I'm procrastinating something else. (ummm, that would include right now I guess)

I'm not a linear thinker and forcing myself to do it that way would just be a way to make me hate writing again.

[ghaff]

It wasn't so bad when you were writing something that was going to get retyped anyway (like for a newspaper). But a lot of the time something like a paper just basically got submitted as essentially a rough draft because you weren't going to edit and retype it.

[robbrown451]

Well for school assignments we were generally expected to turn in the rough draft first. At least in high school, and sometimes in college. So rewriting was generally always expected.

Either way, there was no way I'd turn in my rough draft as a final, as it would either be a mess to look at, or terribly/confusingly written.

I just don't see the benefit of imposing a linear process. I prefer to start my writing with what comes easily, and immediately start tweaking.

[ghaff]

I guess it's an age thing. I never turned in a rough draft and basically never typed an assignment until college for a class (leaving aside a thesis, etc.) The only time I really did back and forth editing was for newspapers.