The April 29 issue of The New Yorker continues to be sensational. This is a great issue even given its own high standards. The article in point is called "Draft No. 4" and was written by John McPhee. McPhee, best known for his nature writings, is no longer a young man and this reads like an elegy. It is a long article and comes across as a master class on writing. Part of it is commentary on the finer points of writing, like the distinction between what and which. (It's the difference between restrictive and non-restrictive). He really gets down to the details that were debated at TNY. No point of English grammar was too trivial to be skimmed over. This is a man who truly cares about careful use of the English language.

My favorite part is an extended section about Eleanor Gould, who applied to The New Yorker as a young woman and included in her application a couple of corrections to recent articles. Harold Ross, the guiding force of TNY, said, "Find that bitch and hire her!" They found her, hired her, and she guided their sentence correction for several decades. They ground it down to the details, right down to the placement of apostrophes after S's. They literally boxed out words in writer's drafts and debated better words.

The article's thesis is that the fourth draft is the tough one. The first one is tough, of course -- you have to have something to say -- but McPhee says the true art of writing is revision. He says you either succeed or fail in the fourth draft.

UPDATE: He also includes that even as a published writer you live every day with the fear that what you're writing is crap.