In response to a question about writing and revising, Jean Valentine said,
It seems to me to be a process of looking for something in there, rather than having something and revising it. I don’t consider that I really have anything yet—except inchoate mess. As I work on it, I’m always trying to hear the sound of the words, and trying to take out everything that doesn’t feel alive. That’s my goal: to take out everything that doesn’t feel alive. And also to get to a place that has some depth to it. Certainly I’m always working with things that I don’t understand—with the unconscious, the invisible. And trying to find a way to translate it.