Now that I am a published author, I do everything I was supposed to do in school (but didn’t). I write notes and outlines and scene descriptions and first drafts and second drafts and more. I lost count of all the times I rewrote Emmy & the Incredible Shrinking Rat, but it was over twenty.
The difference is that now I’m not writing for a teacher, or for a grade. I’m writing because there‘s a story that wants to be told, and there’s a reader out there—you—who wants to read it. And I want to do my very best for the story’s sake, and for you.
If you want to be a really good writer—if getting an “A" isn’t enough—then write it again.
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