Practice, practice, practice

I used to think I could just sit down and write a book. My first draft would be perfect. It worked for me in high school and college. Why won't it work for me now?

(In fact, my greatest writing accomplishment in college was the time I had to write a 10-page analysis of David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest. This is a good book, but it's about 800 pages long. I finished reading the book on the afternoon before the paper was due. Then I sat down and wrote the paper. First draft. Ten pages. On a typewriter. With footnotes. Incredible. And I got an A!)

So maybe you could get by with first-drafts "back in the day." But a whole book? I don't think so.

In every profession, the person who does it best is the one who makes it look easy. Writing is no different. We should produce a finished product which looks like it rolled easily off our fingertips. The reader shouldn't see the blood, sweat, toil and tears every writer experiences.

So, do not turn in a first draft. Rewrite. Then do it again. And again. And again. My first novel had nine revisions before being published, and that wasn't enough. I've read that Hemingway would go through his draft as many as fifty times. My current average is thirty.

If you want to be writer, you must practice. There is no other way.