[pdm55]

Walter Mosley made an interesting observation about the writing process. When he rereads his first draft of a novel, he notes the places where the words go awry: where something is amiss; where a character seems shallow, poorly developed. (I'm just recalling this from memory.) Mosely simply notes those spots in the novel. And keeps reading. Right to the end. He says he finds that when he fixes those sections, that's when the writing starts to sparkle.

The book I read was Mosley, "This is the Year You Write Your Novel".

I guess his message is to not be aggrieved when one’s writing seems like sh*t. That observation might be the start of a good piece of writing.

Alternatively there's the quip of Oscar Wilde: “I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.”