Yes ...I like this way of putting it. Am grafting still.
Ain't that the truth.
Never been comfortable with the label 'writer'. Most 5 year old's are writers. What I strive to be (and struggle with), and it is pure, hard, graft, is a rewriter. That is the difficult bit. Always felt that the first draft is the fun part. In that you can go wild, you can cheat, you can pontificate, you can do what ever you want and have a thoroughly smashing time doing so. But then the REAL work starts. The bit that separates the wheat from the chaff. I try not to pontificate to much about writing, for a variety of reasons, but I am a bore when it comes to the importance of finishing that first draft. Without that nothing happens. The most awful, but completed, first draft novel with at least a modicum of a beginning, middle and an end, puts to shame the most well constructed, literary master-piece that has yet to be completed in its first draft. Anybody who gets to that stage of the process, no matter how badly plotted or written it might be, is deserving of genuine respect, no matter what.
I currently am rewriting what I had thought was a perfectly acceptable novel, and which I had put out in an E-book format, but I am constantly cringing as I wade through what must now be the 9th or 10th draft. But, and I am confident in saying this, there is no better way of learning this craft. I am under no-illusions about my own talent, much beyond I feel I have stories to tell and enjoy doing so but the process of making that happen so that others can either enjoy or dislike my efforts, is bloody torture at times. But, and here I get all pious, I feel that there is very little worth doing in this world of ours that does not require more tears of frustration than it does of joy. Because when you can write or type 'The End', with at least a degree of genuine joy, then it is all worth it. At least until you have to go back and do it all again !
As to the actual topic of this thread, well horses for courses and all that jazz !