Thought for the day -- "The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say." - Mark Twain

You've heard it before...there's writing and then there's rewriting. It took a while for me to discover how my creative process worked and how to make that process work for me. I write "long" and when I reach the revision stage, I'll make serious use of the delete key. Paragraphs and whole pages that I labored over will disappear. Oh, what a waste to discard all those words?

Not at all. They've already done their job by allowing me to discover who my characters are -- figure out why they do the things they do --and learn to hear their individual voices. I needed them, but the story doesn't. I've learned to tell the difference.