I can’t tell you the number of students who have moaned to me over rewriting. They’re disappointed that their stories aren’t perfect first “vomit draft” out of the bag, and then they don’t want to do the work of rewriting. As Philip Roth told Tina Brown (www.thedailybeast.com), “the book really comes to life in the rewriting.” He rewrites each novel many times. Saul Bellow, Nobel prize winner, was known to rewrite a story 50 times or more. In an interview with Lorrie Moore in www.narrativemagazine.com, she tells how she rewrites as she goes, “every single sentence. Hence the slowness.” Writing is not fast. Writing is work. Writing is rewriting. Period.
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