TO: You talk a lot about the process of writing a novel and going in without really knowing what it’s about and having to draft and redraft and discover it along the way. I get the sense that you take a tremendous amount of pleasure in revision. Is the process of writing a short story different?
TMG: No—not really. The idea of making a sort of voyage out of it, at least in the first draft, kind of reminds me of the 70s, when somebody would hand you some drug and you’d say, “What’s this gonna do, if I take this drug?” And this guy said to me once, “Why would you take drugs at all if you knew what was gonna happen?”
TO: Words to live by.
— Téa Obreht interviewing Thomas McGuane on “Not Living the Writer’s Life,” Lithub