I was just writing to a reader about how my process involves rereading work and editing it until I no longer stop and question it, and often people, who edit it are actually doing me a disservice when they suggest “problems” they might see, because I need to see (come to) the problems on my own. Still, Star-Bulletin editor Sharif Goldstein was my editor at The University of Hawaii, where I wrote art, book, and movie reviews. Then Goldstein said he would simply look for and correct for grammar and ask me what I meant to say when he found awkwardness. I would tell him exactly what I was trying to say and he would put that. Those were the happiest times of my life.

I approach my work as Wittgenstein might with his “Philosophical Grammar.” It’s not rocket science. We have all the answers we seek in our minds. We just have to go over and over our work and correct things until we no longer find errors.