It all depends. I attack and then keep attacking them until they tell a story and maybe it’s boring or discordant or I’m not interested in that story anymore, so then I put them away. Sometimes for a year. And then I take them back out and if I disagree with something strongly it’s kind of exciting because I can really be loose on the canvas. When I’ve worked on something for years there are moments where it could be a little scary to be so loose, because you’re destroying so many hours of work. But I think that’s why when I’m a little delirious in the middle of the night the magic happens, or it doesn’t. So sometimes I then work toward building different parts of the painting, and then there’s a new story. If it doesn’t have a story to tell, I’d eventually declare it’s a dead painting. In which case, a la poubelle , to the garbage.

Well, I can’t really work any miracles in revision , like some people can. I don’t always advocate this to students, but I don’t really have a problem just putting something aside. I don’t actually throw it away, because I have the file, but just saying, “You know what, this is not savable. It’s just not interesting to me.” I’m not someone who can systematically chip away at something that’s dead and make it better. I’ll sometimes break things down into parts and think, “Well, this was a 25-page story and it’s just really bad, but there’s a page and a half here that I could sort of use in something one day.” Revision for me is really only something I can get excited about if I can make something better.

What I usually do is write a draft or two and I won’t think too much about the length. Usually my scripts don’t go over 110, 120 pages. I’m pretty good at that. Then I know I’ve got a record of that and whatever jokes are in there. Eventually I’ll read it once or twice, usually once, and then delete it off my computer. Put it somewhere, a drive somewhere, and get it off my computer. And then I rewrite it again from memory. Based on what I remembered from reading it.

I’m still working on it, especially with poems, The only way I’ve found to do any sort of editing is to rewrite or retype the whole thing. It’s a trick my friend Bud Smith taught me. The Bud Smith secret. All his secrets are just basically, you gotta do the thing. And that really worked for fiction. That’s how I redrafted my novel. Because it’s more than a room. It’s a giant city of rooms. With a poem, I think what’s fun in the revision process is just going through, cutting out a line, cutting out four lines, and seeing what happens.

I can’t say there’s a specific place to begin when it comes to creating virtual identities, but it’s important to consider them in the longview. What stays here—in web pages, caches, and hard drives—might be the things that people retain of you in the future ahead. Where scholars might spend years studying the journals and letters of our predecessors, these personal accounts are infinitely more robust. Even if it is a private pursuit, an external drive full of personal exploration can be such a gift to those not here yet.