For me, I believe it's not possible, because I can't sufficiently model a reader's reactions while writing. If I want something to be good, I have to let it sit and come back to it as a reader. Only then can I see the imperfections. Or rather, some of the imperfections. It takes me 3 or 4 passes before a piece really settles down, and showing it to others often yields new avenues for improvement.
I actually agree with you, and I'm just complaining about how edit and draft seem imprecise.
I was thinking of how Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mocking Bird. Also, Philip Roth said something about taking the right first steps instead of the wrong ones and that's how he could tell he had material for a book.
It's possible if you redefine or throw out the words draft and edit. Sure they mean something to you now, but for me you might as well say the secret to writing is writing. The advice to draft then edit till it's good, leaves out how hard you try on the first draft. It makes it sound like editing and drafting are different things when they aren't so different. Do you punctuate on the first draft? In American Pastoral the whole story happens parenthetically between dashes, how would you think to do that on a second pass? I'm worried the first draft has a way of keeping the subsequent drafts down--like writing about socks; on the third draft you still have socks.
Seems to me you are taking time to think, but you could just as easily (to my way of thinking obviously) call it all one draft spread out over a few days.
Yeah, I definitely agree the notion of "draft" is an artifact of write-only or write-mostly media. For me it's much more about the number of passes over the work, so I use "draft" more to mean "a pass, separated by time, over a significant segment of the work".
The concern about early drafts anchoring later drafts is interesting. I'll have to think more about that as I write. Thanks for mentioning it.
For me, I believe it's not possible, because I can't sufficiently model a reader's reactions while writing. If I want something to be good, I have to let it sit and come back to it as a reader. Only then can I see the imperfections. Or rather, some of the imperfections. It takes me 3 or 4 passes before a piece really settles down, and showing it to others often yields new avenues for improvement.