My editor, Jordan Pavlin, my agent Binky, Amanda Urban, or I would see and feel that something was missing there. I would have to try to fill it. You might think, well, there’s something that belongs in this gap. And you try to write it and it’s not very well done. So that’s a whole bunch of trial and error. I would describe it this way. I would feel like I was driving down a road and some sections of the road were simply gone. When I went down in them to fill them in, they became infinite tunnels. And I thought, “Christ, I’ll never get out of this.” There were some parts that got rewritten more than others. I mean, I’ll tell you this, I literally filled tubs, those sterilite tubs—they fill the room behind me—of paper, of takes that I did on this book. It’s seven years’ worth of wrong turns. I moved it all in myself, it was very tiring. It must damn near be 1,000 pounds. So, then, when you ask about actually getting everything to be as right as possible, to make it a smooth road for the reader, I think that just came from going back over it.

I think revising is the same as writing, at least when it comes to the essential truths I wrote about in “Write Like a Motherfucker.” It’s all work. It’s all part of the process. Writing and revision are not two entirely different things, even though they demand slightly different things of us.

First of all, you can correct mistakes much more easily. One sweep of the palette-knife 'lifts' the blood and tears of a morning from the canvas and enables a fresh start to be made; indeed the canvas is all the better for past impressions.

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.