Writers argue, always, about careful crafting on the front end of a project vs. headlong writing to get the story in place before fine tuning sentences and paragraphs.
Here’s what Annie Dillard said about that:
“The reason to perfect a piece of prose as it progresses — to secure each sentence before building on it — is that original writing fashions a form. It unrolls out into nothingness. It grows cell to cell, bole to bough to twig to leaf; any careful word may suggest a route, may begin a strand of metaphor or event out of which much, or all, will develop. … A pile of decent work behind him, no matter how small, fuels the writer’s hope, too.”
from “The Writing Life,” 1989 hardback edition, page 15
Of course, she says the opposite one page later, that a writer’s early strokes are useless until the whole arc of the story becomes clear.
For myself I need the hope that a well-crafted paragraph provides, even if it will be discarded once more is revealed.
