Polishing Your ms. A Waste of Time.

I hear a lot of advice for writers to follow. One that always annoys me is to edit edit edit your work over and over. I disagree. Write, clean up the typos and obvious gaffes, then leave it be.

Heinlein's writing rules make sense to me. Thanks to http://www.gazetteofthearts.com/writer3.htm


HEINLEIN'S RULES FOR WRITING

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1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you write.
3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.
4. You must put the work on the market.
5. You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.

These rules appeared in the 1947 essay "On the Writing of Speculative Fiction."

We believe that they are as true today for all would-be published writers, whatever the field, as they were for writers in the golden age of science fiction magazine pulps.