I love editing probably more than I love writing. Writing does feel in many ways like I’m making mud or making clay, material that I then, in the editing process, can shape and make into whatever I want it to be. But, until I make that mud or whatever, there’s nothing else I can make. After finishing a rough draft, I go back and start rewriting oftentimes within the draft, which is kind of a bad habit because it means that I’ll take more shortcuts. With the first novel, I started to do something that I think I’ll do forever because I love it so much, which is reading out loud. I probably read my novel out loud like six to 10 times.

In order to end up with anything you can use, you have to excavate a whole bunch of stuff you can’t use, and get it all out of your system, and then go back later and chip away at all the terrible stuff that you’ve uncovered, and find the things that go together, ideas that go together, and motifs that feel like they keep coming up; and then, reassemble a piece of writing that way. That’s also what I do for my own stuff.

First, I do two longhand drafts, and those are complete drafts. Every word is gone over and considered. The third draft is when I start typing, but it’s the same process again. The whole thing is reread. I think after three or four, I start to be able to be satisfied with certain sections. And then I start concentrating on things that just are more problematic, that are going to be a tough nut to crack, probably for the duration of the process. But that doesn’t mean that I won’t come back to things and have an “aha” moment, or say, “Oh, wait a minute, this sucks. I thought it was okay, but I found a better way to do it.”

I don’t rewrite. Well, not much. I think I probably do all the rewriting that I’m going to do before I’m aware that I’m writing the play because obviously, the creativity resists — resides — in the unconscious, right? Probably resists the unconscious, too — resides in the unconscious. My plays, I think, are pretty much determined before I become aware of them. I think they formulated there, and then they move into the conscious mind, and then onto the page. By the time I’m willing to commit a play to paper, I pretty much know — or can trust — the characters to write the play for me. So, I don’t impose. I let them have their heads and say and do what they want, and it turns out to be a play.