George Saunders: What Writers Really Do When They Write

A work of fiction can be understood as a three-beat movement: a juggler gathers bowling pins; throws them in the air; catches them.

You revise your reader up, in your imagination, with every pass. You keep saying to yourself: “No, she’s smarter than that. Don’t dishonour her with that lazy prose or that easy notion.”

And in revising your reader up, you revise yourself up too.