I actually really love editing poetry. It’s my favorite part. I love how you can change just one word and it suddenly elevates the line or even the whole poem. When I’m writing poetry, I’m looking and reading through and I’m really interrogating each word and trying to figure out: Is this the best word? Is this exactly what I’m trying to say at this moment? And I do a lot of reading aloud because cadence and rhythm are really important to me. I try to feel where the lines are sitting or where the stresses are, where the hits and the rhythm are. I also like to use those read-aloud functions on the computer because I feel like if it can still sound somewhat bearable with this monotone voice reading it, then that’s probably going to be alright—it’s the final test.

I think this contrast marks the main source of suffering for any creative in any field. The crazy thing is, I wrote a book about it, and it still happens to me all the time. It’s like raising kids or moving somewhere–after a while you forget how hard it really was. You look at your body of work, and you know all too well how exhausting those individual pieces were, but after a while, finished pieces get a sense of authority. They loom over you all monolithically and perfect, and leave you thinking, “Damn, last year you still had it.” But deep down you know how desperately you sat in front of the page and had no idea where the journey would take you. But now you’re stuck with the results, standing there all confidently, glaring at you. It’s easy to despair over that.

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 the same way that I’m rigid about my routine, I’m very rigid about how editing works. I like to start at the top. I can’t write the fourth session before I write the first. I basically have to write it in order, and I can’t really do rough drafts. I have to like the first section, and the shape it’s in before I move to the second one. So basically, everyday I just start at the top, and go down, and hopefully I get further and further down every day. But I generally can’t start in the middle, or be like, “Eh, that section’s a little wonky, but I’ll get back to it.” I kind of need to shore it up, and edit it, and polish it as I go along. And then you give it to an editor, and you start all over again.

He’s been a total delight. So I now have a son of 41, a son of 40 and one of four.

I want to make a movie. I’ve got a very strong movie in my head. And I’ve spoken to some movie people and I’ve said, “If you say it’s no go, I’ll drop it.” They said — two different people — “Do the script.” So I’m encouraged enough to do that.

But there’s nothing like that quality of leading a decent, dignified life, meeting up with other people who have similar ideals, expressing kindness and love and curiosity and challenging and argument and the excitement of ideas. Ideas can be marvelous.

I want to give little Oliver as much daddy as I can while I’ve got strength. I want to make a movie. I’ve got a very strong movie in my head.

And I got stuck in my unconscious for years. I had trouble getting out of explaining, “When I walk, why does my left foot go in front of my right foot?” There was nothing that just happened. Everything had to be predetermined, explained.

Monday to Friday, very, very industriously from ten in the morning ’til about six in the evening, I just sat and wrote, and revised and revised, and wrote.