A great story isn’t written…

A great story is rewritten.

The magic of storytelling doesn’t happen in the first draft. The first draft is chaos. You’re chaos. It’s raw, messy, full of half-formed ideas and awkward sentences.

That’s its job.

The real magic? That happens in revision.

Rewriting is where characters come to life, where themes sharpen, where every sentence finds its rhythm. It’s where you cut the unnecessary, clarify the murky, and refine the essential.

Too many writers expect brilliance on the first try. But no first draft was ever a completed masterpiece. 

• Hemingway rewrote A Farewell to Arms 39 times. 

• Steinbeck rewrote Of Mice and Men from scratch. 

• Shakespeare revised his plays many times. (There are multiple versions of many of his plays.)

If your first draft feels like a mess, good. That means you’re doing it right. Keep going.

The real story is waiting in the rewrite.