It was a huge challenge going from the first draft to the second. From what you said earlier I suspect that you and I might write pretty differently. For me, the first draft is usually the heart of the book; its where I think I do my most vital writing and, if it’s not alive and working in the big ways by the time I’m done, I rarely make it to a second draft. Usually, then, the second draft doesn’t alter the overarching shape of the thing too substantially; it’s about filling holes, fixing problems, re-seeing stuff that’s not working, but all in the service of letting the fresh and newborn first draft reach its potential. Sometimes that takes many, many drafts. It’s very laborious and difficult and extremely important work—don’t get me wrong—but it’s usually not what I consider the heart of thing.

Not that important. I seem to rewrite in my head a great deal. I write in these English ruled notebooks. So I write on the right, and then I correct on the left. Then, when it’s typed out, I even make another correction, and then maybe in the typed sheets also. But not that much. I seem to have a great facility to go right into what I want to say. I do correct, but not like Balzac, who went crazy over the printing presses. He was correcting at the last minute.

As many times as necessary. With one story or novel, this may be five false starts and six or eight or ten full rewrites, beginning to end. With the next, it may mean just going back through it and over it fiddling details until I think it’s as good as I can get it.

D.H. Lawrence wrote several complete versions of Sons And Lovers and The Rainbow and Women in Love . I think that thing of having to begin again maybe enables you to reconceive things, completely reconceive, in a way that’s more difficult now. Now it’s just a kind of constant tampering.

It just matters how you respond to that having your confidence shaken, that makes you what you are.

It brings the freedom of having seen a lot of things and survived them.

I want to be able to do what I have always done which is to say, "I could do this no better. I could not make this better."

I’m just practical. Life comes first for me; art second. Sometimes art comes even later than second.

My half measures are really not good measures.

Beyond that, editing an anthology gives me a chance to find a few new readers for my colleagues’ excellent work.