He said, “It takes as long as it takes.” As a writing teacher, I have repeated that statement to two generations of students. If they are writers, they will never forget it.

Writing is a matter strictly of developing oneself. You compete only with yourself. You develop yourself by writing. An editor’s goal is to help writers make the most of the patterns that are unique about them. There are people who superimpose their own patterns on the work of writers and seem to think it is their role to force things in the

an instantly likable guy if the instant had not been this one.

A piece of writing has to start somewhere, go somewhere, and sit down when it gets there. You do that by building what you hope is an unarguable structure. Beginning, middle, end. Aristotle, Page 1.

Once captured, words have to be dealt with. You have to trim them and straighten them to make them transliterate from the

I had reason not to be optimistic.

The way to do a piece of writing is three or four times over, never once. For me, the hardest part comes first, getting something—anything—out in front of me. Sometimes in a nervous frenzy I just fling words as if I were flinging mud at a wall. Blurt out, heave out, babble out something—anything—as a first draft. With that, you have achieved a sort

What to include, what to leave out.

On a highly competitive list, her foremost peeve in factual writing was indirection—sliding facts in sideways, expecting a reader to gather rather than receive information. You don’t start off like an atmospheric fictionist: “The house on Lovers’ Lane was where the lovers loved loving.” A Gould proof would have asked, “What house?” “What lovers?”