Amanda Lohrey

I like books that do a lot in a short space.

That's what I like as a reader, so naturally that's the way I tend to go as a writer.

There's so much around us now.

There's so much to read.

There's so much to absorb so that a very long book has to be very special to compel our attention to the very end, I think.

I think it's the combination of factors.

I think it's my age.

I'm in my 70s, so I'll sometimes pick up a book that I think is very well written, but

It's about something that I would have been preoccupied with in my 20s, but I'm kind of past that now.

I think also there's a lot of undisciplined writing.

There's too much description.

Not enough happens.

There's a lot of wordiness.

I think editors could be a little more stern with young writers.

I agree.

I'll often read a page and I'll think, this person's a very gifted writer, they've made five or six good observations, they've come up with some lovely poetic phrases, and now an editor needs to say, you've got too many, they're cancelling each other out, pick the two that really land, cut the rest, right?

So once I start to read with my editing pencil, the writer has lost me.

I just cut and cut and cut and cut.

And sometimes you can cut too much.

And once you learn this, you learn to give, once you've got a publisher and an editor you trust, you give them some stuff you've cut and you say, I don't think this belongs, but what do you think?