On Dec. 7, 1941, my father, who was born in Honolulu in 1918, witnesses the bombing of Pearl Harbor from his home in Alewa Heights.
4,888 miles to the east in Washington, DC, president Roosevelt prepares to address the nation. The next day he is planning on going to Congress and requesting a declaration of war against the Japanese. He knows that whatever he says on Dec. 8 will have to be the very best message to bring the country together.
Roosevelt puts on his sports coat and calls for Grace Tully, his secretary. Tully walks in and Roosevelt is smoking a cigarette. He tells Tully that he wants to dictate a speech. He knows in his mind exactly what he wants to say. Roosevelt asks Tully to sit down and begins to dictate, without any pause or hesitation, the message he will present the next day to a joint session of Congress. Roosevelt begins:
"Yesterday, Dec. 7th, 1941, a date which will live in world history, the United States of America was simultaneous and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the empire of Japan."
A few moments later, his dictation comes to an end. Then Roosevelt begins to edit the speech. He crosses out the words "world history" and writes down "infamy" in their place.
It is one of the most famous edits recorded in human history.
Editing, they say, is more important than writing. The job of being a writer is mostly editing. I may have written a book once, but I edited it 5 times. Editing is just a part of the writing process. People are often shocked with I tell them that some of my books have gone through 8-12 drafts. Editing is something I've come to enjoy as much as the initial writing. It's always a joy to see the writing get better, clearer, tighter.
I'll leave you with a quote by the one and only James Michener:
"I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter."