I’ve often said I’m not sure if I would have been a writer if I had to write everything out in longhand—or even use a typewriter (manual or electric).

I wrote a post awhile back in which I shared how my mother-in-law was amazed with seeing me use a word processor. The post was Can you remember … or imagine … life without spell check or life with a manual typewriter? Writing longhand would have been even more difficult.

In Georgia here, long ago when I was in college, they made every graduating student take a reading and writing assessment test called the Regeants Exam. They may still do it, but this was 16 years ago, so who knows. Anyways, I’m a computer guy, and at the time it was a hand written writing exam.

Needless to say, being used to being able to just write using a word processor and then go back an edit and rearrange paragraphs and sentences really killed me with it being a hand written exam.

I guess I’ve become addicted to the ease of editing using a computer now adays.
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I invite your friend to do what you are obviously doing: explore my archives. He (and you) will find quite a bit about editing, including a whole series.

I took a class from a writing instructor who said the first draft is supposed to be “pure green dreck.” I’ve written about that in several posts. That was so freeing to me, because when I first started writing I thought everything had to be right before I continued writing. Giving myself permission to write “pure green dreck” the first time around made a big difference. As I’ve gained experience, my writing has improved, and my first drafts aren’t quite as bad as they used to be. However, I know no matter how bad the first draft is, I can fix it—even if it decide this is so bad, I can’t use it, I have that idea out of my head, leaving room for better ideas the next time around.