I revise constantly, as I go along and then again after I've finished a first draft. Few of my novels contain a single sentence that closely resembles the sentence I first set down. I just find that I have to keep zapping and zapping the English language until it starts to behave in some way that vaguely matches my intentions.

She will remain sane and she will live as she was meant to live, richly and deeply, among others of her kind, in full possession and command of her gifts.

We always worry about the wrong things, don't we?

She is overtaken by a sensation of unbeing. There is no other word for it.

There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more.

The vestibule door opens onto a June morning so fine and scrubbed Classira pauses at the threshold as she would at the edge of a pool, watching the turquoise water lapping at the tiles, the liquid nets of sun wavering in the blue depths. As if standing at the edge of a pool she delays for a moment the plunge, the quick membrane of chill, the plain shock of immersion.

Accept that, like many men, you have a streak of the homoerotic in you. Why would you, why would anyone, want to be that straight?