Also, I recommend reading Raymond Carver’s essay, “A Storyteller’s Shoptalk,” published by the NY Times for more insight on the relationship between writing/re-writing. http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/01/21/specials/carver-shoptalk.html

"Evan Connell said once that he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the story again and putting commas back in the same places. I like that way of working on something. I respect that kind of care for what is being done. That’s all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones, with the punctuation in the right places so that they can best say what they are meant to say."