How do I love thee? Let me count the drafts

"Out West" Photo taken by ancestors
on honeymoon in the 1920s.

The dirty little secret about writing great fiction is that, except in very rare cases, it's a lot more work than anyone who has never done it can possibly imagine. 

This is probably no secret to accomplished artists in any discipline, whether sculpture, dance, poetry, acting, photography, fashion design, cooking, yoga -- the list is long. However, accomplished artists don't want you to see the work, they want you to experience the fruits of their labor without thinking about that labor. (Be wary of Anne Hathaway's acting skills - she's too attached to having you see her acting).

I remember reading an interview with an agent - I can't remember who it was now, but I'd like to think it was Molly Friedrich, of the Friedrich Literary Agency, because she's such a straight shooter (this interview and this article from Poets & Writers should convince you) - that said something like, "Don't even begin to approach agents about representing your work until you've written at least seven drafts."

Like anyone with a normal ego, I immediately thought to myself, "Of course, that doesn't apply to me. I'm a good writer. Molly's addressing her remarks to schmucks and hacks. Certainly not to me." It will come as no shock to the aforementioned accomplished artists that Molly was, in fact, talking to me.

What counts as a draft?

Great question. I don't know if there is a definitive answer. For one thing, when you write using a word processing program on a computer, you tinker far more with your manuscript than in the days of typing on paper - or maybe not: maybe you just waste a lot less paper (remember the stock image of the writer angrily tearing a page out of the typewriter carriage, crumpling it up, and throwing it in disgust toward the wastebasket? The camera pans back, the wastebasket is overflowing and the floor, it turns out, is ankle-deep in crumpled pieces of rejected writing). 

You may count your drafts differently, but here's how I count mine:

• First draft. You're really satisfied with what you've written, not the least bit embarrassed by any of it, and you want to know if you're delusional, or if it's as good as you think, so you share it with several readers whose opinions you value and trust.
• Second draft. Your readers have gotten back to you; they validate that there's much to like in your manuscript, but they have some edits and some suggestions; you sort through these, take most of them into account, and take the well-intentioned but irrelevant (in your mind) with a grain of salt, produce an "edited" version of your manuscript and share it with a different group of readers.
• Third draft. This latest group of readers begin to give you the feedback you really wanted to hear - "Clark, this is really great! It's going to be a bestseller! It's so much better than [insert name of current hot book at the top of the New York Times Bestseller List]!" Now we're talking! But your readers don't stop there: "There are just a couple of things, though, that I had questions about." Those couple - or dozen - things happen to be the very things YOU had questions about, too (whether or not you admitted it to yourself). The questions force you to think more deeply about certain characters and decide whether the cloak and dagger section in the middle - which you had such fun researching and writing - is better suited to a Pink Panther movie than this particular novel. You face some hard truths, you remember the old saw about "murdering your darlings," and you cut and rewrite and reshape and refocus, and share the resulting manuscript with yet another set of readers.
• Fourth through nth drafts. From among your rapidly dwindling stable of readers, Fate now provides one who is not only a great editor, but who is also uncompromising. She really thinks you may be onto something, if you're willing to work for it. It is through work on these drafts, each of which your editor insists you complete before giving it to her to read, that you begin to have a glimmer of what it really means to be an author.