The best advice I can give on this is, once it's done, to put it away until you can read it with new eyes. Finish the short story, print it out, then put it in a drawer and write other things. When you're ready, pick it up and read it, as if you've never read it before. If there are things you aren't satisfied with as a reader, go in and fix them as a writer: that's revision.

Words can wound, and wounds can heal.

Everybody who has ever read Sandman knows exactly what the Sandman looks like, which is more than anybody who has ever read The Catcher in the Rye can say about Holden Caufield.

What should I believe? thought Shadow, and the voice came back to him from somewhere deep beneath the world, in a bass rumble: Believe everything.

Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story.

You see, the outcome of the battle is unimportant. What matters is the chaos, and the slaughter.

Even if your goose habitually lays golden eggs, it will still be cooked.