Sometimes I like things I’ve written, but usually, when I’m revising it, I’m appalled by incoherence, wordiness, lack of specificity, boredom, like many other stylistic and material sins. It can get very dreary. I have revision techniques that can usually work to combat those errors.

I’ll revise a poem if I’m not happy with it, just to get it to a point where I’m like, “Well, I guess this will do.” But I always feel like the best poems come out almost exactly right the first time. The kinds of poems that I do more slowly and revise more, they never feel completely finished. I actually feel the same about essays. I really like to write essays all at once. Then I’m only really making small edits from there. I’ll just think about them for so long that I feel like, “Okay, now I know exactly how to write this”.

First, I do two longhand drafts, and those are complete drafts. Every word is gone over and considered. The third draft is when I start typing, but it’s the same process again. The whole thing is reread. I think after three or four, I start to be able to be satisfied with certain sections. And then I start concentrating on things that just are more problematic, that are going to be a tough nut to crack, probably for the duration of the process. But that doesn’t mean that I won’t come back to things and have an “aha” moment, or say, “Oh, wait a minute, this sucks. I thought it was okay, but I found a better way to do it.”

I just write whatever comes to mind, and I tell myself that nobody is going to see this. Just get it all down. That first draft that I did in six weeks, I wouldn’t even call that a first draft. I would call it the ugly draft, the draft that you arrive at before you call it a first draft. And everything is wrong with it. There’s no clear idea of voice or character. I’m just in there trying to find the feeling, like what do I want this work to feel like when I get it done? And to see the material that I’m interested in.