Robert Olen Butler’s story “Moving Day” is up on Fictionaut this week, and they’ve done an interview with him for their regular blog section “Line Breaks.” In it, it’s astounding to hear how much writing he did before he feels he produced anything he felt was worthy. He calls it his “million words of dreck.” And also interesting, he relates the dreck to being more in tune with the “cool willfullness of his mind” than his “creative unconscious.”

On a related note, over the weekend a friend of mine who’s living in China right now, Martin Russell (aka Doc Martin), relayed the quote to me: “There are opportunities everywhere. They’re just hidden by mounds of hard work.” Something like that, but you get the idea. I can’t remember who he said it belonged to. This, along with the million words of dreck, are going to stick with me for a while.