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Let’s address the elephant in the room right from the jump: I’m not your mom.

If you make a kitty cat out of yellow Play-Doh, I do not have to showcase it on my desk at work for my colleagues to “enjoy.” If you trace your hand and make it into a Thanksgiving turkey, draw eyeballs on the thumb, turn the fingers into feathers, I don’t have to fasten it to my fridge and stare at it with awestruck pride. I’m under no obligation to cherish every little thing you make.

But while I’m not your mom, I may be your reader. I may gobble up your novel, your essay, your short story. I may, in fact, become your biggest fan...

When I was in grad school, a teacher told our workshop that if a published novel is 300 pages, the writer had to generate 1,200 along the way. I didn't buy it. Maybe it took this teacher 1,200 pages to find the right 300, but I would never have to produce such excess. I'd maybe need, say, 307. Then I'd move some commas around, get all thesaurus-y with the adjectives, maybe test-drive a new font. But 1,200 to end up with 300?

No way. Not me.

Now that I've published five novels, I know that she was spot on. But what I would have never been able to predict about my process was the importance of the 900 pages that an end-reader will never see. They aren't wasted. They are vital, just as important as the 300 that are bound and placed on the shelf.

Really, novelists are writing two books simultaneously.

The first book is that 1,200-page draft, though it's probably never actually 1,200 pages at once, but parceled out from remix to remix. This all-seeing draft is bulbous and overwritten, with nonessential scenes and flights of exposition that tell the reader too much, leaving no space for the reader to put the pieces together for herself. This draft will have entire mythologies, backstories rendered in such minutia that the writer will even bore herself on subsequent readings, and she wrote the damn thing.

We can call this book Authorial Research, a thorough, often painstaking, often unreadable beast best never shown to anyone else, even our spouses and/or lovers, who may say it has "potential," but they're lying.

At the same time, however, from these 1,200 pages, we are making determinations, weighing the contribution of certain chapters and scenes, homing in on the protagonist(s), their wants and desires, obstacles in their path, emotional and existential trajectories, opportunities for change. We are deciding which chapters and scenes solely belong to Authorial Research and which ones we deem essential to the other book, the one we hope to publish, our Perfect Artifact.

It's never perfect, of course, but this is the way we must think about it, with an impassioned, dedicated, maybe delusional eye, seeing merit in the work way before there's any on the page. We have to be our own advocate, not just writing when we feel inspired, when the muse drunk-dials us and spills the good stuff. No, we need to put our butts in the chair consistently. No one is responsible for helping us find the time to write. No one will ever value our art like we do. It's our art; it's our onus. Brew more coffee. Kiss the kids. Get back to work.

And be ready to be a bit confused by the revision process.

And be okay with that confusion.

Revising a novel is like living in an M. C. Escher painting. We walk down a staircase, only to end up at the top again. One door leads to another, leads you back to where you started. The revision process can be so frustrating that a lot of people abandon their books — books that have the potential to be amazing if only the author had stuck with it. So how can we evade this pitfall? How can we be non-abandoners?

The first thing about remixing a novel is managing your expectations. We'd all like to write like Toni Morrison right from the jump, but it doesn't work that way. Even Toni Morrison doesn't write like Toni Morrison at first. A rough draft is merely the raw materials, and from these crude supplies we'll sculpt art, page by page, phrase by phrase.

Nothing will frustrate you more than expecting the book to be good too quickly, and once you get discouraged, you won't work on it as often. In fact, you'll find anything else to do. I know when I'm really struggling writing a new novel when my bathroom is spotless.

It's on us to find ways to keep our morale up during the multiyear process of revising a novel, and realistic expectations are the foundation from which we work. We need expectations that are high enough to keep us motivated, pushing ourselves to be the best artists we can, yet never ones that are so lofty that we feel like shit. Otherwise, why would you write draft 4 if you hate the experience of composing draft 3? And what about draft 9 giving you the finger on the horizon?

If we, however, are able to resist comparing our nascent drafts to Toni Morrison, we can dig in and start the hard work of finding our stories. They are in there, in the maw of that awful rough draft. We have to dive in our Escher paintings and find them.

So how do we do that? I've heard from many students that the revision process is too arcane, too encoded. "What should they do?" they ask in panicked emails. "Start on page one and fix every flaw along the way?"

For one, stop looking for THE ANSWER. There isn't one. There are many. You have to find the revision process that works for you. Don't just do what Denis Johnson or Stephen King or Amy Hempel champion for their own work.

No, you are on the hunt for what works for you and have to find a process that jibes with your particular programming. I'm not smart enough to fix 187 problems at once, but I can wrap my limited faculties around solving one or two narrative dilemmas. So that's what I do, focusing on a subset of issues on a draft-by-draft basis. One draft, I'll only concern myself with POV. Another: psychology from my primary players. Maybe draft 6 is a plot draft, in which I'm paring things back, making the manuscript greyhound lean, knowing that there are other concerns that need my attention, and I'll certainly get to them, but not right now. No, it's plot, only external action, creating a taut, furiously readable story.

By sequestering various craft elements like this, it allows me to focus my attention. That's my ANSWER. It may or may not help you. But you should at least try it. Be promiscuous. Try every technique until you find what brings out the best in your art.

It's important to remember that your writing and revision process don't have to make sense to anyone except you. Do you write in the shower at three in the morning? Do you dictate chunks of material to Siri while sitting in the Laundromat? (I did this, after my daughter was born, the Laundromat my only sanctuary.) Do you shirk conventional wisdom that says "try and write every day" and only scribble biweekly?

That's fine. Anything is fine, so long as it works. You are not Toni Morrison, and I'm glad you're not. Be you. I want to read your book. I want to hear your voice.

Your imagination is as unique as your fingerprint. Always play to it as the ultimate strength on the page. It's what makes your art

Good day, gorgeous people of the Powell's literati:

This is the last day I'll be yakking at you here. Thanks for letting me ramble a bit. And thanks for those of you who've been popping me emails about these posts. When you lob content onto the Internet, it's nice to know that people are taking the time to read. You rule!!

I know I've already said some of this in earlier posts this week, but I've never been afraid to repeat myself. So if you're an aspiring writer, here's what I'm hoping you do:

• Write recklessly.

• Feel completely liberated from quality control in your early drafts. Be like an improvising musician; there's plenty of time to clean things up in subsequent revisions.

• The best writers I know are relaxed authors. Have fun on the page. It makes all the difference in the world. Trust me.

Now go brew that coffee, crank that rock and roll, and let your imagination loose from its cage. Let it ravage the city. Decimate the village. Let it smash the kneecaps of every oppressor in sight!

All my best,

Josh

[email protected]

The street artist arrived home three hours later, and his wife said, "How many did you do today?" She didn't notice the damage on his face. Or she didn't care.

"Six." He threw his supplies down on the kitchen table.

"That's it?"

"It was windy."

"Rent is due next week and you're complaining about wind," his wife said.

"I'm not complaining about wind."

"It wasn't windy."

"Should I go back out?" he asked.

"Just feed your son so I can get off my feet for awhile."

"What's he having for dinner?"

"Like you don't know," she said. "But go ask him." She walked out to take a shower.

He went into the TV room where his son was watching America's Funniest Home Videos. He sat down next to him. "How are you?"

His son didn't answer. His face needed to be shaved.

"How are you doing?" he said again.

"Good. Spaghetti."

"You want spaghetti for dinner?"

"Good spaghetti," his son said and kept looking at the TV.

The street artist didn't get up right away to put water on to boil for the noodles. Instead he sat next to his son and watched the funniest home videos and wondered if it was windy in

Dear smart, beautiful, savvy members of the Powell's literati:

How are you today? I'm hoping that we can all agree that Tom Waits is a badass. I mean, how many amazing songs has he written? How many times has he reinvented himself over the years? I admire his seemingly fearless ability to shatter our expectations.

Sometimes I pretend that Waits gives me pep talks on days when I'm writing predictable blasé sentences. That's probably not something that I should admit in public, but we're all friends here, right? Well, aren't we? Here's how it normally plays out between Waits and me:

"Why don't you try something you've never done before?" Tom asks. "Blow our minds with something unexpected."

I shrug my shoulders, hem and haw, crippled with obviousness. "It's not that easy. Stop making it sound so simple."

"Seriously," he says, "if this is the best work you can do, why not make balloon animals instead?"

I guess I'm so interested in defying expectations because I'm trying to write a comedy. So far, I've written three very dark, very macabre novels, and I want to flex some different narrative muscles with the next project. But I'm also really scared about it. What if I get outside my comfort zone and I can't do it? What if all I have is my comfort zone? I think I'll go cry now...

I guess the bottom line is that, as an artist, you have to be willing to fail. You have to be brazen enough to challenge yourself, knowing that it might not work. Tom Waits consistently does this, and I hope to grow into that kind of artist myself: one who pushes himself to learn and grow, despite the fact I might fall on my face.

How about you? What kind of writers do you admire? Ones who tread the same material or ones who excavate new parts of their imaginations? If you write, is this something you're conscious of?

Here's the fourth installment of the short story I've been posting in segments this week. The ending will go live tomorrow. Enjoy!!

"Have we landed in Paris?" the girl with the black eye asked.

"I'm doing my best," the street artist said, which was what he'd been telling people for years. He drew Tyler's face snarling and beads of sweat collecting and leaking from his forehead and his right hand was knotted into a fist, scars across his knuckles, and his left hand had the girl with the black eye by the hair and there was a conversation bubble coming from Tyler's mouth that said "Abort that baby!" and the street artist hadn't drawn the Eiffel Tower behind them because he didn't want to take them anywhere. He wanted them to remain here, with him, with her black eye and their baby's bruised face and Tyler's rollicking demons: he wanted them stuck in their own lives the way he was soldered to his.

"I think I'm finished," the street artist said and he turned the portrait around for them to see, and their faces were astonished, and no one said anything for about 10 seconds and finally Tyler stood up and said, "What the fuck?" and the street artist said, "It looks just like you, huh?" and Tyler said, "What's your problem?" and he knocked over the easel, and the street artist kept holding up the picture and said, "Do you see yourself?" and the girl with the black eye sat there speechless, and the street artist said it again, "Do you see yourself?" and Tyler ripped the portrait from the street artist's hand and, much like the actual picture, knotted his right hand into a fist and punched the street artist in the jaw, who fell backward onto the sidewalk, and Tyler crumpled the portrait up into his right hand and punched the street artist with it in his fist and said, "Who do you think you are?" and a couple people walking by pulled Tyler off of the street artist and he and the girl with the black eye walked away, arm in arm, Tyler consoling her with each step they took in the opposite

To pay the bills, I'm a professor. I teach in the MFA program at the University of San Francisco. If there's one thing I feel like I've learned from reading the work of all my smart students, it's that the future of literature is incredibly bright. When people lament MFA programs, they usually criticize them as an ad hoc governing body that homogenizes student work, makes everybody write in similar modes, etc.

But in my experience, that's nowhere near the truth. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the imaginations I see my students showcase consistently impresses me.

On the first night of workshop, I always tell my students that no one else on earth has her particular imagination. Nobody can write the exact stories that she can. No one can take us on a guided journey quite like her lovely nimble mind.

So for all you aspiring authors out there, remember to play to your imagination as a strength. It's your greatest asset. Liberate yourself on the page and feel completely free!! I can't wait to spend the $30 to read your fiction some day.

Here's the third installment of the short story I've been posting in segments this week. If you need to catch up, I posted the first installment on Monday and the second piece on Tuesday.

The street artist drew the girl with the black eye's stomach much larger than it actually was, a huge belly and a big baby visible through her skin, and the street artist drew a black eye on the baby too because Tyler was the sort of guy to hand his violence out like Halloween candy. The street artist wanted the girl to know what her child was in for, that the boy or girl wouldn't evade Tyler's wrath, and he didn't deserve the healthy life growing in her body, and why would Tyler end up being the father of a normal child while the street artist had a life sentence of making good spaghetti?

The street artist ran his pen in circle after circle around the baby's black eye, exaggerating and indicting. Defacing the baby. He made the baby frown and tears ran down its face and splotches from his red pen on the cheeks. The girl with the black eye and the baby with the black eye, and it was time to draw Tyler. It was Tyler's turn.

I'd imagine that a responsible hub like Powells attracts a ton of smart readers. That's you. I'd also assume that there are a lot of aspiring writers. That might be you, too. In that spirit, I wanted to chat a bit about insomnia, which in my humble opinion has gotten a bad rap over the years.

I'm an insomniac, and I'd like to sing its praises for a minute. My best work gets done between midnight and 5 a.m., in the hours liberated from cell phones and emails and "real world" responsibilities. Sometimes, I think I'm better suited for my imaginary worlds anyway. Real life confuses me.

I have no scientific facts to back up my argument here, except to say that my running theory is that in the middle of the night the gap between my conscious and subconscious mind is somehow narrowed. Every wild, reckless, nutty idea I've ever had on the page started in an insomniac fit. It's a time liberated from rational thought. I never hedge my bets. I don't pander. My decision making on the page is strong and confident.

Anyway, if you're an aspiring writer, give it a shot. Stay up and write tonight. Let me know how it goes. Here's my email: joshATjoshuamohr.net. If nothing else, you and I can lob emails back and forth.

One thing I'll guarantee: you'll be a train wreck the next day. I'm not trying to get you fired. And I don't think you should ignore your kids. But try it out one night: why not brew some midnight coffee, turn on some rock and roll? Turn your imagination loose to go crazy on the page!

As I mentioned yesterday, I'll conclude each blog post this week with an excerpt from a short story. By the end of the week — Monday through Friday — you'll have read the entire piece. Here goes the second installment:

The street artist prepared to draw the girl with the black eye first. Normally, he captured his subjects from the neck up, but he didn't want to this time. No, this time, he wanted to make sure and capture her whole body because she was pregnant. There was life in her. There was hope.

He drew her black eye. Swollen hues puffing under it. A ledge of skin commemorating Tyler's temper. Tyler had punched her in the eye, the street artist knew. Not a doubt in his mind. He beat her because of his own squealing failures; beat her because it was easier to make someone else hurt than feel your own disappointments. He probably wanted her to have an abortion.

"Are we in Paris yet?" the girl with the black eye said to the street artist. "I'm in the mood for a croissant."

"We've started our final descent," he said.

"Good. I'm starved."

"There's a shocker," Tyler said.

"Should I deprive your baby of sustenance?"

"Our baby is going to be fine."

How many times had the street artist said those same words to his wife? How many times had he consoled her phobias of birth defects? How many times had he said them right up until they'd become a lie?

For the first few years of their son's life, there was unity, a willingness to work hard and offer constant care; they excelled in doting and protecting and babying him. It was easy when his body was small. Proportionate with his mind. But as everything for the boy grew, gaining girth and whiskers and length, the street artist's commitment waned. The boy's 16th birthday, when other boys and girls his age pleaded with their parents for a driver's license, a car, the keys for a night out with friends, his son had said, "Good spaghetti, good spaghetti," and the street artist knew this would never stop, that they'd celebrate their son's 30th, 40th, 50th birthdays the same way, endless portions, "Good

I always celebrate writing a book by getting tattooed. With the first novel, I got a campy heart with the main character's name in it. Silly me, I thought people would find "Rhonda" etched on my wrist an interesting conversation starter, but every time somebody asks, "Who's Rhonda?" and I say, "He's this guy I made up," they always scamper away as quickly as possible.

With book two, Termite Parade, I took the hint and made the connection a bit less literal, a pretty picture of a bumblebee. It incites much less scampering.

I recently tattooed Damascus on the back of my forearm in Arabic. It's a language of stunning architecture. If you've never really looked at anything in Arabic, check it out:

What can I say about Damascus that won't sound like self-aggrandizing schlock, sure to make you scamper off? I can tell you what I tried to accomplish: I wanted to write about an oddball litany of players, from a berth of backgrounds, varied demography, contradictory social viewpoints ranging from veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom to performance artists. I wanted to honor my father, who died of cancer, by writing about an imagined cancer patient. I wanted to examine my struggles with booze and drugs via a female character named Shambles, whom I absolutely cherish. I wanted, in my own small way, to protest the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I wanted to talk about the simple self-esteem battles that every human fights day in day out, by featuring a character inexplicably hiding in a Santa suit. Most importantly, I wanted to pen a wild, reckless romp, a weird world for a reader to huddle in for a few hours.

I'll be blogging here all week, and I thought it would be fun to share a work-in-progress with ye of the Powell's literati. So I'll end each day's post with an excerpt from a short story I'm working on — by Friday, you'll have the whole piece. Sound like fun? smile

The girl had a black eye and the guy with her didn't. These were the first details the street artist noticed as they plopped down at his sidewalk stand to have their picture drawn. The street artist stared at her swollen eye, then the guy's healthy eyes, and back to hers. It was a sunny afternoon in Berkeley, California. College kids trounced up and down Telegraph Avenue, walking by the street artist's stand without much acknowledgement. That was, until the girl with the black eye and the man sat down and asked the street artist, "What will it cost us?"

Five dollars," the street artist said.

"Don't make me look fat," the girl with the black eye said.

"You're not fat."

"Dude, you should see her naked," the guy said, nudging her and laughing.

She hit him playfully on the arm and smiled. "Shut up, Tyler," who apologized, though it was obviously insincere. The street artist got the sense that if these two were home alone, barricaded in some trashed apartment, the guy wouldn't be saying sorry for anything, but slugging beer from a can, a dune of tobacco bulging from his bottom lip and making the girl with the black eye wait on him like an indentured servant.

"Better suck in your gut," Tyler said and patted her on the stomach.

"That isn't a gut, asshole. That's your baby."

"Looks like a gut to me."

"What kind of background?" said the street artist.

"It can be anything?" the girl with the black eye asked.

He nodded.

She stared at Tyler. "Where should we go?"

"I don't care."

"Paris? In front of the Eiffel Tower? Can you do that?" she asked the street artist.

"Sure."

"Pack your bags," she said to Tyler. "We're off to