You don't need a dead father to explain a character's sadness. And impressing yourself with wit/cleverness often feels like what it is - authorial intrusion.

There's definitely a magical quality to writing that can't be explained. I can write something I love in two days, or I can work on a story every day for months and it never comes together.

Some of the things I liked in my years as a student in workshops: the occasional in-class prompt; discussions about what it means to be a writer in the world; professors who are brutally honest and encouraging at the same time (this is a tough one).

I think training your instinct comes from writing and reading. There's no big secret. And reading slush helps, as well; I'd recommend everyone edit a literary magazine at some point. It's time-consuming, but there's a lot to learn from other writers who are also learning. The patterns (twelve stories about whales in this batch?) are also interesting.

You don't need a dead father to explain a character's sadness. And impressing yourself with wit/cleverness often feels like what it is - authorial intrusion.

It's also obsessiveness. I'll spend a lot of time working on a single sentence, debating over a dash or a colon, etc. I want things to be perfect. I know nothing will ever be as perfect as I want it, and this is very sad, but sometimes I can get close.

I think there simply comes a point at which you're beating your head against the wall with revision, when you're making something different but not better. For me, revision usually has more to do with making the language prettier, finding clearer images, using more active verbs.