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.

I've learned so much from my professors and have been fortunate to have had so many good ones, including Frederick and Steven Barthelme, Edward Carey, Jim Magnuson, and Elizabeth McCracken.

I also liked it when professors assigned us stories that they love. In general, I liked workshops more when they were more than just a workshop, when the professor took the time to actually guide us as young writers and teach us things it took them a long time to figure out on their own. I could probably write ten pages on this question.

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.

Sometimes the way comes later, when I'm not working or thinking about it at all. When stories don't work, you try to convince yourself that all of that time and energy wasn't wasted, that it will make you a better writer, if nothing else.

I try to think as little as possible, at least while working. I look at some of my early stories and can see the machination behind them, like a gear slowly moving. For example, sticking a dead father into the story to explain a character's sadness and bad decisions, or trying to impress myself with my own cleverness.

I don't know what people want, really. Does somebody have to die? What is meant by resolution? These are questions that I don't quite know what to do with. That being said, I did want the characters to be changed by the end of the book. But will what they've gone through alter their lives from this point forward, i.e. will they make different (better) choices? Probably not.