Quality Vs. Quantity: A writer’s dilemma

This post will wrap up my series on being a more prolific writer. I meant to have this up by Friday, or Saturday at the very latest, but other things distracted me. So I apologize for those of you waiting in suspense for the final post in the series.

Being a prolific writer means writing large quantities of material. To do that, one must be productive. To be productive as a writer, one must spend a consistent amount of time writing (notice I didn’t say "a large amount of time" or even "a lot of time", consistency is key). But as the week wore on, I began thinking "Does being a prolific writer really matter?" Then I narrowed it down to a matter of Quality Vs. Quantity.

During my last semester at college, one of my English professors told us that he would much rather have us write a killer essay that might be a page or so under the minimum requirement, then write a 30-page essay that is filled with fluff and constantly repeating the same points over and over again. This is a prime example of quality ruling over quantity. This isn’t to say, however, that you can’t start out with a 30-page essay and then cut it down to a focused and crisp piece of writing through editing and lots of hard work.

So in the end, there’s a fine line all writers must walk. If you’re going to write 100-pages a day come hell or high water, that’s fine. Just make sure you don’t get lazy later on. This means you still have to edit! On the other hand, if you’re going to write one short story a month (averaging 20-pages, for example), that is fine as well. Just make sure you’re editing your work.

My point is that whether you’re prolific or not, you still must edit your work. And by "editing" I mean cutting out the fluff, re-writing different sections to make them more clear, having a second (and even a third) pair of eyes proofread you writing. You can be the most prolific writer in the world, but it won’t mean much if all you turn out is crap and don’t take the time to revise.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter how much you write. The final product is all that matters. A rough draft is exactly that, rough. It is imperfect by its very nature and begs to be edited. So I still maintain that when you’re writing a rough draft, just write. Turn off that inner editor and get the words down on paper. If you do your work, no one will see that cliched metaphor, or that paragraph full of sentence fragments. Just make sure those mistakes don’t end up getting published!

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• Tips on becoming a more prolific writer
• Don’t be afraid to write!
• Avoiding burnout and boredom as a writer
• Don’t give up on that writing project!
• 7 Tips for Good Writing

Read More: Writing, Writing Tips