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I do like to turn a phrase, but it's all about how you turn it.

I revise constantly, as I go along and then again after I've finished a first draft. Few of my novels contain a single sentence that closely resembles the sentence I first set down. I just find that I have to keep zapping and zapping the English language until it starts to behave in some way that vaguely matches my intentions.

The first draft of everything, I write longhand. One of the nice things about that is that it makes you keep going. If you write a bad sentence on the computer, then it's very tempting to go back and fidget with it and spend another 20 minutes trying to make it into a good sentence.

I huff and puff and struggle with every sentence, paragraph and page - sometimes every word as well.

I'm a language-oriented writer who proceeds sentence by sentence.

I'm tired of wasting letters when punctuation will do, period.

I try and get it right the first time. I may rewrite a sentence four or five times, but I rarely go back and kill a whole page and rewrite it.

And that's one thing that helps me is I learn it blandly, vanilla, then I don't try to act it too soon because you start to act it, and you kind of go away from what the next sentence is, what the next paragraph is. So get it down so it kind of can - it's in there so you can then, as I call it, dance on top of it.

When I write something, every word of it is meant. I can't say it enough.

Words are like untying a corset - you can move into this great space with them.