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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.

Finding pleasure in revision is the thing I would most strongly advise to people. It's not something I did as a younger writer; I learned it over time.

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

Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

I don't write a quick draft and then revise; instead, I work slowly page by page, revising and polishing.

Once I get over maybe a hundred pages, I won't go back to page one, but I might go back to page fifty-five, or twenty, even. But then every once in a while I feel the need to go to page one again and start rewriting.

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've thought about writing, but it hasn't happened yet. It's like schoolwork - you start doing your revisions two nights before you're compelled to turn it in.

I continue to wish that writing were easier, that it would flow out completely perfect with no need for revisions.

I revise obsessively. It's important to me to have a clean page.