Explain, Mr. Michener.
"I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters. I find that three or four readings are required to comb out the clichés, line up pronouns with their antecedents, and insure agreement in number between subject and verbs...My connectives, my clauses, my subsidiary phrases don't come naturally to me and I'm very prone to repetition of words; so I never even write an important letter in the first draft. I can never recall anything of mine that's ever been printed in less than three drafts. You write that first draft really to see how it's going to come out."-- James A. Michener
My friend Tom Ong played tennis with JM in Bucks County. Michener confided that he had an advantage over his fellow writers in that he had a photographic memory. After reading “Iberia” where he spent ten pages to describe a church doorway (I exaggerate for effect by not by much), I believe the claim. My favorite though is “Chesapeake.”