It took me years to learn that sentences in fiction must do much more than stand around and look pretty.

Sentences or solutions occur to me in the shower, or while running on the treadmill, or riding on the subway.

I first started writing fiction in college because I was attracted to beautiful sentences. I loved to read them. I wanted to write them.

These days, I like to think of sentences as workers. Only one of their jobs is to look and sound good. Sentences are the carriers of plot. They're the conjurers of images, the conveyors of tone and meaning and voice. The best sentences surprise us.

I like to edit my sentences as I write them. I rearrange a sentence many times before moving on to the next one. For me, that editing process feels like a form of play, like a puzzle that needs solving, and it's one of the most satisfying parts of writing.

A good story, just like a good sentence, does more than one job at once. That's what literature is: a story that does more than tell a story, a story that manages to reflect in some way the multilayered texture of life itself.