like a monstrous, red, pre-historic flower

one thing about authorship in the age of word processing: one definitely no longer thinks in terms of discrete drafts and revisions: the thing can grow from within with rolling revision. or you're working on two or more chapters simultaneously, while every so often trolling for corrections or obvious additions throughout. one suspects that this had just got to change the final product, though it's perhaps an elusive matter to say just how. you might dick around with all sorts of different organization, to the point of fucking your shit up or getting strangely fragmented. i have to say, i would much much rather write this way than on a typewriter, which is how i started. or i used to write on pads and then type. obviously there is something to be said for that, but how many writers would go back? for one thing, it's just a far more refined product; you've been over it dozens of times, though perhaps not with the same concentration as on the two stabs you used to get.