First comes the fever. Scenes arrive with the confidence of false memories. Characters say things you didn’t plan, and the plot behaves like a runaway shopping cart. This is the generative madness that makes dead pages feel alive. But if you stop here, you are left with nothing but a beautiful, chaotic evasion. A story that moves, but says nothing. Vibe.
Drafting is like séance work. You arrange your ritual objects (a premise, a voice, a specific pain) dim the lights of self-consciousness, and wait for someone imaginary to start sounding like they’re telling the truth.
Like philosophy, the point isn’t just to invent a world, but to lean on it until the contradictions crack. Because there is a paradox at the heart of the engine: Why would this imaginary person tell you the truth, when that truth, if it came out plainly, would leave you exposed on the page?
Writers go wandering in the unreal. When you are there, the imagination doesn’t speak the truth. Not fully. It brings the truth to the table, but hides it in worthless alibis to stop you from facing your own feelings.
Returning to the real world, you must switch on the harsh light and ask where the draft is lying to you. The text will try to charm you. It will confess to lesser crimes. It will offer clever metaphors as bribes. It will do anything to keep you from writing the one sentence that actually hurts.
The exorcism is simple and cruel. You must cut every pretty line that protects you from saying that sentence.
It isn’t a one-time discovery, but a narrowing of the field. Each time you interrogate a draft this way, your real voice has one less place to hide.
The page isn’t alive just because it moves.
It’s alive when every dodge has been cross-examined, and the writer has nowhere left to run.
When I wrote The Night Aquarium, the draft was a lie. It hid the truth. I didn’t know he was a bus driver. I didn’t know what he did. I saw the blinks. How he pressed. I didn’t see the meal he ate after.
I didn’t even see him seeing himself. How he despised himself.
All of this came in editing.
The idea took an hour to form. The draft took a couple of hours. The editing took much more time. I think it’s close to the truth now.