Beyond 20 Drafts

I am in good company to have written more than 20 drafts of a novel. Ernest Hemingway rewrote the ending of A Farewell to Arms 39 times. Compared to nonfiction, a novel may require more drafts and take longer to get right. Writing a novel is a unique challenge, rather like birthing a brainchild: each book is different and needs as long as it takes.

Before publishing my debut novel, , I had gone through so many revisions that I asked myself “What’s there left to revise?” Then, a published friend encouraged me: “You have to get through, a linked story collection, won the Juniper Prize. The stories were previously published in the literary journals. So the manuscript was pretty clean, and I just had some line edits. The toil of revision—like labor pains—is conveniently forgotten so I can go on writing another book.