Trusting the Process

Time and again, I find myself striving to make my writing process more efficient--and time and again, it doesn't happen. Although I can streamline some things--I'm a great fan of writing out character descriptions and plot outlines beforehand, for example--I can't seem to shorten the amount of time it takes me to rewrite a book.

I was wondering this morning if that's part of the process: spending time getting to know characters, plot, theme, setting.

I find myself writing lengthy passages of dialog in order to discover one key line; writing lengthy passages of description in order to capture the whole of it in a few well-chosen words; and writing paragraphs of theme-musings in order to draw out the core of what I'm trying to say. Ideally, I'd like to get to that one line of dialog, description, or theme the first go-around, but is that even possible?

I can make goals for pages to edit or write, but I can't seem to cut down the number of passes it takes for me to make good writing excellent. And yet...it seems to work.

Trusting the process: I think I'll post that above my computer.

:) Cheryl