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It's interesting that Asimov offered advice that suggests writing without concern for whether everything fit together; just getting the first draft out was the

It's interesting that Asimov offered advice that suggests writing without concern for whether everything fit together; just getting the first draft out was the goal. This somewhat conflicts with Asimov's own style of writing (which he talked about in at least one of his three memoirs, as well as other places), which was effectively to write the final draft the first time. He was not prone to heavy editing after writing, and was also not prone to editing while writing. So, he was basically just writing and handing it off to his editor/publisher (and I think it's also been established that his editors also had a soft touch with his work). So, maybe he was just being kind enough to not hold everyone to his own standards. And, maybe he developed his skill for writing without a net through tremendous amounts of practice (more practice than almost every other human who ever lived...he's among the most prolific book authors the world has seen). Anyway, I read everything about Asimov I come across. But, this is kinda blogspammy. Asimov's own memoirs are worth a read. I have not read Janet Asimov's books about Asimov, yet, but surely will eventually. Also, this site breaks the back button for me in Firefox. That's gross, and I literally hate every person who's ever intentionally broken basic browser functionality for profit, ego, or whatever reason they thought made it OK.

SyneRyder 10y ago
I agree the site is blogspammy, but is the back button a Firefox issue? I tried the site in Safari & Chrome as well and there's no issues with the back button there, only in Firefox.
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  The back button in Firefox works fine on sites that don't fuck with the back button. So...no, I don't think we can reasonably blame Firefox. Firefox has a reasonable implementation of the History API, so it isn't that Firefox doesn't support some feature that a single page app would need in order to make stuff like URLs work right. And, it's not like Firefox is some obscure browser with 1% of market share.
louhike 10y ago
Maybe his style of writing has evolved through time and what he was doing at the end of his carreer wasn't something to do when you start writing.
acqq 10y ago
> This somewhat conflicts with Asimov's own style of writing (which he talked about in at least one of his three memoirs, as well as other places), which was effectively to write the final draft the first time. He also claimed that he didn't need prepare his speeches, and that he managed to fit them in the given time frame up to the minute without watching at the clock. If he really had that capability, you must imagine him being able to keep in head "the plan" and follow it, not only with which material he will "fill the space" but also how many words he will spend on which part, which would explain his ability to write "mostly right the first time." But reading his memoirs also shows that he confirms that it was much faster for him to write non-fiction than fiction books. Good fiction was significantly harder to "get it right" even for him. It is also true that, in the science fiction genre, he wrote primarily short stories for a while, first selling them one-by-one. So he had a lot of the possibility to "learn by doing" and from the feedback. He even had his own cataloging system for everything he wrote, which wasn't computerized by based on cards, and he claimed it to be better for him than the computerized solutions, he gave one of book to be processed by some external company using the computer technology and was not satisfied.

SyneRyder 10y ago

I agree the site is blogspammy, but is the back button a Firefox issue? I tried the site in Safari & Chrome as well and there's no issues with the back button there, only in Firefox.

SwellJoe 10y ago
The back button in Firefox works fine on sites that don't fuck with the back button. So...no, I don't think we can reasonably blame Firefox. Firefox has a reasonable implementation of the History API, so it isn't that Firefox doesn't support some feature that a single page app would need in order to make stuff like URLs work right. And, it's not like Firefox is some obscure browser with 1% of market share.

louhike 10y ago

Maybe his style of writing has evolved through time and what he was doing at the end of his carreer wasn't something to do when you start writing.

acqq 10y ago

> This somewhat conflicts with Asimov's own style of writing (which he talked about in at least one of his three memoirs, as well as other places), which was effectively to write the final draft the first time. He also claimed that he didn't need prepare his speeches, and that he managed to fit them in the given time frame up to the minute without watching at the clock. If he really had that capability, you must imagine him being able to keep in head "the plan" and follow it, not only with which material he will "fill the space" but also how many words he will spend on which part, which would explain his ability to write "mostly right the first time." But reading his memoirs also shows that he confirms that it was much faster for him to write non-fiction than fiction books. Good fiction was significantly harder to "get it right" even for him. It is also true that, in the science fiction genre, he wrote primarily short stories for a while, first selling them one-by-one. So he had a lot of the possibility to "learn by doing" and from the feedback. He even had his own cataloging system for everything he wrote, which wasn't computerized by based on cards, and he claimed it to be better for him than the computerized solutions, he gave one of book to be processed by some external company using the computer technology and was not satisfied.