It may take weeks or months to get all the words on paper. One day, however, the first copy, or draft, of your story is finished. It sounds fine and you go to bed delighted with your accomplishment. The next morning your pleasure fades. It doesn't read nearly as well as you had thought. It is wordy in some spots; hazy in others, and there is much that could be improved. Back to work. By rewriting here, cutting there, shifting paragraphs somewhere else, you bring a revised or second draft into being. There may be a third and even a fourth draft before you are satisfied. Some authors have rewritten a single sentence more than a hundred times before it pleased them. Writing is an enjoyable but not a particularly easy job!
1/ A Story and a Manuscript, in Pages, Pictures, and Print: A Book In The Making, written and illustrated by Joanna Foster, New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1958
1/ A Story and a Manuscript, in Pages, Pictures, and Print: A Book In The Making, written and illustrated by Joanna Foster, New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1958
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