I revise like crazy. I start revising before the pen hits the paper.

What you create when you're teaching fiction writing is a kind of literary salon, not a social club or a mutual admiration society, not a debating society, not a repair shop, not a fight club or a soap box. It's a place to have a conversation about a story.

With each draft, the work gets better, and usually that means tighter. It means getting the precise word, not the approximate word.

I revise like crazy. I start revising before the pen hits the paper.

It's easier to write about a place sometimes when you've left it, when you can apply your imagination to your memory and let your emotions guide the writing about a place.

You lose a wallet or keys or something and you notice in a second, but your life can go missing and you don't even know it.

You can't possibly conduct a proper affair without a lot of deliberating, scheming, speculating, and conniving. It's a delicate balance where the excitement must equal the guilt and sex must be as bright as the future you gamble.