I can hear you groaning. Hey, I groaned too. For years, actually. The first time my writing mentor grabbed his head in disbelief when I told him how many drafts a single book takes me (5-6), I couldn’t understand his distress. “Why do you torture yourself?” He asked. I was confused. Torture? Isn’t re-writing part of the writing process? Doesn’t every writer talk about it?

It took me a few years to understand that he was right (no kidding, he had multiple books as bestsellers on the New York T...