The past exudes legend: one can’t make pure clay of time’s mud. There is no life that can be recaptured wholly; as it was.Which is to say that all biography is ultimately fiction.
A man is an island in the only sense that matters, not an easy way to be. We live in mystery, a cosmos of separate lonely bodies, men, insects, stars. It is all loneliness and men know it best.
First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to re-form it….
