Someone said writing is rewriting. I rewrite while I'm writing, and I rewrite when I finish the draft. I'm always rewriting. I rewrite the paragraph. I rewrite the sentence. I rewrite the page. Everything goes through the mill... quite a few times. Then you have a draft and you re-read it, and you can have a terrible time after you've... you've re-read your first draft because it's... the book is terrible. First drafts are terrible. What you have to do now is use your good critical sense to figure out what's wrong, so you're... you're not a... a writer for the moment. You're your own sternest critic. What the hell is wrong here? And then you become a writer and you think, what can I do to rectify that problem?

So these are the... these are the processes that you use to write... to write the book. When you're done finally, you're not certain you're done. You know that you just... you've exhausted all the possibilities you can think of for the book. You can't think of anything more to stick into this book. That's it.

I give my books – when I finish them – to various friends to read, three or four or five people. And they read them and then I'd go and sit and talk to them for an hour or two. And, when I hear all of them, I go back to my typewriter and I think: what have they said individually and collectively? What have they told me about this book that I didn't know and I didn't see? And very often you can crack it open and go back into it because of these other voices, you know. You may not rewrite the thing in its entirety, but suddenly scenes occur to you, sharpening people occurs to you, and so on.