I remember a school visit a long time ago when a third grader stood up and said: “Can you write a book without rewriting a book?”
“No,” I said.
“Shoot,” said the kid in a thoughtful voice. “There’s got to be some way around that.”
I thought about that child when I woke up this morning.
I’m writing a book.
Which means that I’m rewriting a book, which means I’m writing it again and again—wrestling with the words, the punctuation, the plot, all of it—working to make it right.
Some part of me is always like that third-grader, thinking “there’s got to be a way to do this without doing this. It can’t be this hard.”
But it is hard. It never comes out right the first time.
You have to rewrite.
The only way out is through.

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