My favorite part is how he describes his creative process. > I go through the story again and again until I feel increasingly satisfied with everything in it.

My favorite part is how he describes his creative process. > I go through the story again and again until I feel increasingly satisfied with everything in it. This process tends to happen such that the beginning sections get “done” first, and then that sort of narrows the choices as I near the end, if that makes sense. > I’ve sometimes compared it to painting a floor (although I’m not sure that’s really a thing). But … you keep going back and touching up the room until the whole thing looks good to you. Then, at the very end, there’s just that area around the door. You give it one last swipe of the brush as you step out. > In a story, it’s a feeling of being able to get through it with pleasure from start to finish—no hitches, no little bumps of resistance. With experience, I think a person can get better at feeling even the slightest bumps. And weirdly, those are places where the story is really trying to ascend to higher ground.