Editing Writer (section)

===Writing process===
[[File:Carlyle manuscript burning Japan cph.3g10399.tif|thumb|Japanese print depicting [[Thomas Carlyle]]'s horror at his manuscript burning]]
{{main|Writing process}}
There is a range of approaches that writers take to the task of writing. Each writer needs to find their own process and most describe it as more or less a struggle.<ref name=Older>{{cite news|last1=Older|first1=Daniel José|title=Writing Begins With Forgiveness: Why One of the Most Common Pieces of Writing Advice Is Wrong|url=http://sevenscribes.com/writing-begins-with-forgiveness-why-one-of-the-most-common-pieces-of-writing-advice-is-wrong/|access-date=11 September 2015}}</ref>
Sometimes writers have had the bad fortune to lose their work and have had to start again. Before the invention of [[photocopier]]s and electronic text storage, a writer's work had to be stored on paper, which meant it was very susceptible to fire in particular. (In very earlier times, writers used [[vellum]] and clay which were more robust materials.) Writers whose work was destroyed before completion include [[L. L. Zamenhof]], the inventor of [[Esperanto]], whose years of work were thrown into the fire by his father because he was afraid that "his son would be thought a spy working code".<ref>{{cite book|last=Bryson|first=Bill|title=Mother Tongue&nbsp;– The English Language|year=1990|publisher=Penguin Books|isbn=978-0-14-014305-8|page=185}}</ref>
Essayist and historian [[Thomas Carlyle]], lost the only copy of a manuscript for ''[[The French Revolution: A History]]'' when it was mistakenly thrown into the fire by a maid. He wrote it again from the beginning.<ref>Eliot, Charles William, Ed. "Introductory Note" in ''The Harvard Classics'', Vol. XXV, Part 3. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909–14.</ref> Writers usually develop a personal schedule. [[Angus Wilson]], for example, wrote for a number of hours every morning.<ref name=Wilson>{{cite journal|last1=Wilson|first1=Angus|title=Interview with Angus Wilson|journal=The Paris Review|year=1957|issue=Autumn-Winter No.17|url=http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4848/the-art-of-fiction-no-20-angus-wilson|access-date=5 December 2014}}</ref>

[[Writer's block]] is a relatively common experience among writers, especially professional writers, when for a period of time the writer feels unable to write for reasons other than lack of skill or commitment.

{{Quotation|''Happy are they who don't doubt themselves and whose pens fly across the page''<br />[[Gustave Flaubert]] writing to [[Louise Colet]]<ref name=Brown>Plate caption to an image of a much-corrected page of [[Madame Bovary]] in the Bibliothèque Municipale de Rouen. In {{cite book|last=Brown|first=Frederick|title=Flaubert: a biography|year=2006|publisher=Little, Brown and Co|location=New York|isbn=9780316118781|url=https://archive.org/details/flaubertbiograph00brow}}</ref>}}

[[File:Leonid Pasternak - The Passion of creation.jpg|thumb|left|''Throes of Creation'' by [[Leonid Pasternak]] ]]

====Sole====
Most writers write alone – typically they are engaged in a solitary activity that requires them to struggle with both the concepts they are trying to express and the best way to express it. This may mean choosing the best genre or genres as well as choosing the best words. Writers often develop idiosyncratic solutions to the problem of finding the right words to put on a blank page or screen. "Didn't [[W. Somerset Maugham|Somerset Maugham]] also write facing a blank wall? ... [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe|Goethe]] couldn't write a line if there was another person anywhere in the same house, or so he said at some point."<ref name=Hughes>{{cite journal|last=[[Ted Hughes|Hughes]]|first=Ted|title=Ted Hughes: The Art of Poetry No. 71|journal=The Paris Review|year=1995|volume=Spring|issue= 134|url=http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1669/the-art-of-poetry-no-71-ted-hughes|access-date=12 October 2013}}</ref>

====Collaborative====
Collaborative writing means that other authors write and contribute to a part of writing. In this approach, it is highly likely the writers will collaborate on editing the part too. The more usual process is that the editing is done by an independent editor after the writer submits a draft version.

In some cases, such as that between a librettist and composer, a writer will collaborate with another artist on a creative work. One of the best known of these types of collaborations is that between [[Gilbert and Sullivan]]. Librettist [[W. S. Gilbert]] wrote the words for the [[comic opera]]s created by the partnership.

====Committee====
Occasionally, a writing task is given to a committee of writers. The most well-known example is the task of translating the Bible into English, sponsored by King [[James VI and I|James VI]] of England in 1604 and accomplished by six committees, some in [[Cambridge]] and some in [[Oxford]], who were allocated different sections of the text. The resulting [[King James Version|Authorized King James Version]], published in 1611, has been described as an "everlasting miracle" because its writers (that is, its Translators) sought to "hold themselves consciously poised between the claims of accessibility and beauty, plainness and richness, simplicity and majesty, the people and the king", with the result that the language communicates itself "in a way which is quite unaffected, neither literary nor academic, not historical, nor reconstructionist, but transmitting a nearly incredible immediacy from one end of human civilisation to another."<ref name=Nicolson2>{{cite book|last=Nicolson|first=Adam|title=When God Spoke English: The Making of the King James Bible|year=2011|publisher=Harper Press|location=London|isbn=978-0-00-743100-7}}(p.240, 243)</ref>

====Multimedia====
[[File:William Blake Nurses Song Copy Z 1826.jpg|thumb|[[William Blake]] "[[Nurse's Song]]" from ''[[Songs of Innocence and of Experience]]'']]
Some writers support the verbal part of their work with images or graphics that are an integral part of the way their ideas are communicated. [[William Blake]] is one of rare poets who created his own paintings and drawings as integral parts of works such as his ''[[Songs of Innocence and of Experience]]''. [[Cartoonist]]s are writers whose work depends heavily on hand drawn imagery. Other writers, especially writers for children, incorporate painting or drawing in more or less sophisticated ways. [[Shaun Tan]], for example, is a writer who uses imagery extensively, sometimes combining fact, fiction and illustration, sometimes for a didactic purpose, sometimes on commission.<ref name=Tan>{{cite book|last=Tan|first=Shaun|title=The Oopsatoreum|year=2012|publisher=Powerhouse Publishing|location=Sydney|isbn=9781863171441}}</ref> Children's writers [[Beatrix Potter]], [[May Gibbs]], and [[Dr. Seuss|Theodor Seuss Geisel]] are as well known for their illustrations as for their texts.

====Crowd sourced====
{{main|Crowdsourcing}}
Some writers contribute very small sections to a part of writing that cumulates as a result. This method is particularly suited to very large works, such as dictionaries and encyclopaedias. The best known example of the former is the ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'', under the editorship of lexicographer [[James Murray (lexicographer)|James Murray]], who was provided with the prolific and helpful contributions of [[William Chester Minor|W.C. Minor]], at the time an inmate of a hospital for the criminally insane.<ref name=Crowthorne>{{cite book|last=Winchester|first=Simon|author-link=Simon Winchester|title=The Surgeon of Crowthorne: a tale of murder, madness and the love of words|year=1998|publisher=Viking|location=London|isbn=0670878626|title-link=The Surgeon of Crowthorne: a tale of murder, madness and the love of words}}</ref>

The best known example of the latter – an encyclopaedia that is crowdsourced – is Wikipedia, which relies on millions of writers and editors such as [[Simon Pulsifer]]<ref name=Grossman>{{cite magazine|last=Grossman|first=Lev|title=Simon Pulsifer: The Duke of Data|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1570732,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070210120348/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0%2C9171%2C1570732%2C00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=10 February 2007|magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]]|access-date=21 February 2013|date=16 December 2006}}</ref> worldwide.