DINTY MOORE: Over the years of teaching, it's not necessarily the student who's the best student in the room who, 10 years later, writes me an email or I run into them and says, you know, I published a book. It's the student who's most stubborn. It's the student who likes playing with sentences, who wants to get the first paragraph of their story right, and they're just persistent.
I've had some students who you'd think weren't particularly good writers, whatever "good" means. But their sentences weren't lovely. Their sense of structure was still kind of clumsy. But they really wanted to get it right. And they were interested in words and interested in sentences. And they'll show up. I remember teaching a long time. They'll show up in 10, 15 years and say, well, I just published my first book. I just published my second book.
I've had students who "seemed to be" the best writer in the room. I'm talking young students. And they don't go anywhere, because they don't work at it. It just comes easy to them.
The best advice-- and students don't always like to hear this. And it's not always easy to do in school, because you have deadlines-- this assignment is due next Thursday. But the best advice is is to revise a lot-- to do a lousy first draft, to look at it, say, is there anything good there? Do a second draft, look at it, say, is this getting any better? I do a lot of drafts, because most of my stuff isn't due next Tuesday for Professor So-and-so. I just work it until I think it's done.