Unfortunately, the book is quite uneven in that not every author seemed particularly willing to share their process. For instance, I left the section with Joyce Carol Oates wondering why Woodruff bothered included it; plainly, getting information from her was tantamount to pulling teeth and the result is superficial.
Joyce Carol Oates claims to love revising, but she clearly doesn't love to talk about it; still, her many drafts offer great insight into her process. Tobias Wolff doesn't save his drafts ("They embarrass me"), but he is happy to talk about them, while Tess Gallagher is not at all self-conscious about the path to a finished piece: "We start out in these very awkward ways, and we do look a little stupid as we draft," she says, "and that's all right." Implicit in this book is the arrival, sometime, at a finished work, but there isn't always such a thing. "Every draft is a final draft, after a while," says Donald Hall. "But I know from experience that I will probably keep on tinkering." --Jane Steinberg