Does Urgency Come Before Craft in the Digital Age?

Within the Ernest Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston are forty-seven alternate endings of A Farewell to Arms. Most of these are collected in the 2012 edition of the novel, which The New York Times describes as "an artifact of a bygone craft, with handwritten notes and long passages crossed out, giving readers a sense of an author’s process."

Craft sometimes takes a backseat to urgency in the digital age. No matter what sort of content you produce, whether it be journalism, commentary or entertainment, the knowledge that your competitors are meeting the public's voracious appetite places you under incredible pressure. In this ultra-competitive environment, "publish or perish" takes on an entirely new meaning. No wonder first drafts are becoming a thing of the past; while you're polishing, others are publishing and dominating the landscape.

However, this also means that the editorial process is more important than ever before. Mistakes occur in this hurried atmosphere, and they're often disastrous. Running a small shop? Your credibility is at stake, so consider a safety net (or at least a process for review).

• Blogging or using a web publishing system? Write your article in a word processing app, which encourages you to slow down a bit and consider what you're writing. Somehow this makes the writing seem more permanent, which encourages revision and reflection.
• Print and proofread the hard copy. We all want to be digitally savvy and perform every single task on our computer or smart device, but we read physical media more closely and carefully. You'll spot more errors this way, both from a prose and copy editing perspective.
• Have a colleague take a look. The cliche about "another set of eyes" isn't such a cliche after all.
• Concerned about typos in boilerplate you must use? Cut and paste, use templates, or create macros.

So, unless you really are writing a novel, there probably isn't time to create forty-seven alternate endings or drafts. But you must somehow build in some time for revision, or you certainly won't be a credible publisher for very long.