Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process

by John McPhee

Your last piece is never going to write your next one for you.

As a nonfiction writer, you could not change the facts of the chronology, but with verb tenses and other forms of clear guidance to the reader you were free to do a flashback if you thought one made sense in presenting the story.

I am not talking just about first sentences. I am talking about an integral beginning that sets a scene and implies the dimensions of the story.

I include what interests me and exclude what doesn’t interest me. That may be a crude tool but it’s the only one I have.

“[expletive deleted],” which sounds like so much gravel going down a chute.

breaking them in, so to speak, but not exactly like a horse, more like a baseball mitt.

An editor’s goal is to help writers make the most of the patterns that are unique about them.

Writers come in two principal categories—those who are overtly insecure and those who are covertly insecure—and they can all use help.

I just stay there and fade away as I watch people do what they do.

the essence of the process is revision.

The dictionary definitions of words you are trying to replace are far more likely to help you out than a scattershot wad from a thesaurus.