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Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing. Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing.

I used to write fiction, non-fiction, fiction, non-fiction and have a clear pattern because I'd need a break from one style when going into the next book.

Every book is like starting over again. I've written books every way possible - from using tight outlines to writing from the seat of my pants. Both ways work.

Books aren't written - they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it.

I always rewrite the very beginning of a novel. I rewrite the beginning as I write the ending, so I may spend part of morning writing the ending, the last 100 pages approximately, and then part of the morning revising the beginning. So the style of the novel has a consistency.

I rewrite my books many times before submitting them, and after my editor takes a look I wind up rewriting some more! It's a good thing I learned at an early age to keep on trying. Stick to it, and eventually you'll get there.

Every reader re-creates a novel - in their own imagination, anyway. It's only entirely the writer's when nobody else has read it.

Often something comes in from which you can see that the person is good, the book may not be perfect as it is, and the person doesn't want to do a re-write. That's something we do almost nothing of.

If one book's done this well, you want to write another one that does just as well. There's that horror of the second novel that doesn't match up.

I have a bad tendency to get rapidly bored with my own material, so rewriting is hard for me. I mean, I already know the story and would rather read something new.