How long is a piece of string?
You'll come across this in all the discussions, when do you know it's finished? What constitutes a rewrite? The best answer I found before going down that rabbit hole is "what's your intention with the piece?" Do you want to just self-publish a draft or write something worthy of praise and awards?
I have gone over my work before, taking chunks out and moving them around, or simply tightening what was already there. I'm sure another editor would've taken a hatchet to some of my stuff, but when I've given it to a reader, they've just said it was good. I've had very little in the way of constructive feedback, other than I overuse dialogue for exposition rather than other means, so it's more like a film than a novel. So I've tried to be more descriptive. Most of what I do is emotion driven. I stick to one POV character at a time, I don't "headhop", which wasn't a term I came across in university. Had I handed in anything that looked like what is being published now, especially if it were fan-fiction, I'd have been kicked out most likely. But I don't just publish a draft and I don't just finish something then run a spell/grammar check and assume it's perfect.
Overworking something can tear it apart, rather like starting a quilt then getting two thirds of the way through it before you decide to unstitch every patch and start again, making more of a mess than you had to begin with. So you'll always come across people who wish they'd trusted their instincts and not done the multiple rewrites requested by others. But show me an author who believed their first draft was perfect, and I'll show you a liar.
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