I like to mess around with my stories. I’d rather tinker with a story after writing it, and then tinker some more, changing this, changing that, than have to write the story in the first place. That initial writing just seems to me the hard place I have to get to in order to go on and have fun with the story. Rewriting for me is not a chore–it’s something I like to do. I think by nature I’m more deliberate and careful than I am spontaneous, and maybe that explains something. . . . Maybe I revise because it gradually takes me into the heart of what the story is about. I have to keep trying to see if I can find that out.
–Raymond Carver
Writing Fiction 