"Wait until the book is finished before making a judgment on its content. By the time you have gone through twenty drafts, the characters may have developed lives of their own, completely separate from the people you based them on in the beginning. And even if someone, at some time, gets upset with your words—so what? Live your life, sing your song. Anyone who loves you will want you to have that."

"Beginning writers almost always underedit."

"I also go out in the afternoons to shoot photographs.  I find that the process of training the eye to compose in the viewfinder helps me hone my ability to revise poems.   I've always loved the connections and cross-pollination between art forms."

"There are thousands of editors out there looking for work. The big publishers use a lot of freelance editors these days. I can hire the same people I might end up with if I were to go the traditional route, pay them once, and still retain ownership and control over my work."

"As a general rule, I won't ever cut anything because I feel it makes me 'look bad' or is personally humiliating.  I am impervious to those considerations.  I lack a sense of personal discretion or protection in my work because I feel like, if this is what I do for a living, I have to do it 100 percent or not at all."

"I don't want to release something I don't think is ready. I feel I have one chance to hook readers, so I should show them my best."

"The only reason I was asked to edit this volume [of The Best American Short Stories] was because someone out there in the world was equally conscientious and didn't let this nobody writer slip between the cracks."

"If you can still tell what's red ink on your manuscript and what's your own blood then you haven't finished editing."

"I work with three: my editor in the U.K., my editor in Australia, and my editor in America.  It does make it hard, because often their editorial reports contradict each other, so in the end, I have to make my own decision."

Worlds of Wonder

"Never use screenwriters as your [novel] beta readers.  You need feedback from people who are voracious book readers, not film/TV fans."

"The most important thing is to tell your story the way it needs to be told without shortchanging the reader or keeping gratuitous bits that could be streamlined to keep the pace moving."

"I don't show a soul a word I've written—my editor and agent read the third draft, but my friends and family have to wait until it's published."

"A writer should never give readers information they don't need.  In any given story it's either important or it isn't, and it's my job to feel out the difference."

"I think the word is fearless because once writers start editing how they do what they do or what they're writing about, I think you've already lost what you need to be doing. So I think being a writer is emotionally brave, and if you can't go there, maybe you're not ready to do it yet."

"Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong."

"What I've found over the years is that I've never regretted anything I've ditched—I've only regretted the stuff I've left in."

"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."

"You have to be ruthless.  There comes a point when you know in your gut something just isn't working, or isn't as good as it should be."

"We want the art, that's what we're aiming for.  We're aiming to suppress our cautious editor who always tells what to do.  I think one of the big writers said, 'Write drunk, edit sober.'  I say: Write fat, edit lean.  In that first draft, put all the extra stuff in, anything that comes into your head.  What happens is we self-edit as we're writing—Oh, that's not going to make it in the final.  Don't worry about that.  Put it in.  It's going to add flavor, and it's going to inform the text.  Once you're done with that, then go through and put it on a diet.  You know, we want a fat baby.  They've got the chubby cheeks, the chubby arms, the chubby fingers—we love that!  That's good.  When the baby grows up, then we want the lean muscle."

"Imagine sentences instead of writing them... Keep them imaginary until you're happy with them.  Revise at the point of composition.  Compose at the point of revision.  Accept no provisional sentences.  Make no drafts.  And no draft sentences.  Bring the sentence you're working on as close to its final state as you can before you write it down and after.  Think of composition and revision as the same thing."

"[The airplane pilot] said, 'Why do you think I do this job?  It's for the seven minutes of takeoff and the 11 minutes of landing.  The computer does the rest.'  And to me, that's like writing.  You do it because you get this great idea, and you have the excitement of the first draft, but most of it is revision, and doing the wrong stuff, and fixing and fixing.  And then, you get the landing.  It's very much the same."

"Writing improves in direct ratio to the number of things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there."

"I know when my brain cells are freshest.  I protect that time.  I know when I'm in a good mood, I'm more generative.  When in a foul mood, I should be editing."

"The first comment I got from my editor was that it was the most linear plot she'd ever read, and she could predict exactly what was going to happen, and I needed to rip the whole thing apart and redo it.  So that's where I got with outlining."

"Read the first five pages. Count clichés. If you find one, the buzzer goes off: it's not a serious novel. A serious novelist notices clichés and eliminates them. The serious novelist doesn't write 'quiet as a mouse' or paint the world in clichéd moral terms. You could almost just substitute the adjective 'cliché-free' for 'serious.'"

"I never correct anything and I never go back to what I have written, except to the foot of the last page to see where I have got to. If you once look back, you are lost. ... By following my formula, you write 2,000 words a day and you aren't disgusted with them until the book is finished, which will be in about six weeks."

"The only reason writers publish is to stop rewriting."