You know those times when somebody asks you a question and everything depends on a decent answer, and somehow what comes out of your mouth is the opposite of what you meant to say? And as soon as you say it, it's out--you can't take it back--so you have to talk around the idiotic thing you said so it sounds like something different from what you actually said--opposite, hopefully, but what you really need is to have un-said it. To stuff it back in your mouth where it came from. Along with your foot. Because it certainly didn't come from your brain. This happened to me a few weeks ago. It was a job interview for a teaching position and the question was one of the easiest questions they could have asked a novelist: "What is your personal revision process?" I spend my life writing and then revising what I write. And also suggesting ways for other people to revise. I know my process. This should have been my dream question, the one that sealed my chances for a...