Writers often torture themselves trying to get the words right. Sometimes you must lower your expectations and just finish it.

When you print out your manuscript and read it, marking up with a pen, it sometimes feels like a criminal returning to the scene of a crime.

Writing a first draft is like groping one’s way into a dark room, or overhearing a faint conversation, or telling a joke whose punchline you’ve forgotten. As someone said, one writes mainly to rewrite, for...

Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.

Even if you’re in the thick of revising another work, write something new. Something small. It’s important to keep telling yourself stories.