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I draft quickly and then revise, a lot.

I'm a passionate believer in revision, and a lot of my writing gets done during revision process. It isn't just tweaking: I tend to break it apart and remake it every time I do a new draft.

I guess the thing I would say most fervently is that your original impulse to write something is an impulse you should trust, and that if it doesn't work on the first draft, which it hardly ever does, the commitment to revising ought to be something you embrace really early. And to revise and revise and revise.

Generally I finish a first draft in 2-6 months, then I set it aside for a while so that when I come back to it I can read it with fresh eyes and figure out how to improve it.

After finishing a draft, no matter how rough, I almost always put it aside for a while. It doesn't matter if it's a story or a novel, I find that when it's still fresh in my mind I'm either thoroughly sick of its flaws or completely blind to them. Either way, I'm unable to make substantive edits of any value.

I write until the first draft is finished, and then I feel that I can get out. But, during the time of the writing of the first draft, I don't go out. I'm just locked away, writing. It's a time of meditation, of going into the story.

Sometimes I can spend as long revising a manuscript as I spent writing it in the first place.

I edit as I write. I revise endlessly. I don't go forward until I know that what I've written is as good as I can make it.

I tend to write some, then outline some, then delete some, then go back and rewrite some. I love revising and hate first drafts. I have to wear bedroom slippers. My current favorites come from the Zetter Hotel in London. They have little tobacco pipes on the toes.

Writing the first draft of a new story is incredibly difficult for me. I will happily do revisions, because once I can see the words on the page, I can go about ripping them up and moving scenes around. A blank page, though? Terrifying. I'm always angsty when I'm working my way through a first draft.