I have finished the third draft of my novel.  It’s now five thousand words longer and considerably better.  I think I’m pretty close to being done.  Here is how this works, in my experience:

• First draft — I figure out what I want to say.
• Second draft — I say it.
• Third draft — I clean up the mess.

Here’s an example of the mess.  I came across this sentence the other morning: “After a few hours we stopped to eat and feed the horses.”  Wait, what?  How can you feed the horses after you have eaten them?  I guess maybe that wasn’t what I had in mind.

Was I asleep when I wrote that sentence?  Drunk?  No, I was just working through the action and not paying enough attention to the style.  So that sentence is fixed.

Now I need to read through the whole thing again.  You know, just in case.