Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach

Style, for example, is not—can never be—extraneous Ornament…. [I]f you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.’ (Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, in the 1916 book On the Art of Writing) Writing Needs Revision When I taught composition and creative writing to high school students, many of them felt that the first draft they spit out was enough. Boom. Done. They did not want to go back and revise. But writing needs revision. So they learned in my class that writing is a process. Now, it’s true that they had, at that point of arriving at a first draft, successfully worked their way through several stages of writing—from pre-writing and development stages to the first draft. But they weren’t done yet. No, they needed to go through editing, revision, proofreading and peer review stages—which might lead to more