Ten or 15 years ago, whenever I compared writing to a more visual art form, I’d talk about throwing a pot on a wheel. I was most interested in the shape of a story at that point, because I had struggled with plot and structure for years. I was also learning the importance of revision, so I liked the comfort of telling myself that the first draft was for putting the clay on the wheel — formless and misshapen though it might be. Similarly, some writers talk about piling the sand in the sandbox, before building the castle.

The other day at David Jón Fuller’s launch for his novel Venue 13, we talked about the way writing is a storytelling art that keeps its rehearsals private, unlike theatre and other performing arts. That’s always been comforting to me, too: I can tell and retell until I get it right, before I share it with anyone.

These days, when I think about how I write, I think about painting. The way I layer, scrape away, mix right on the canvas, let some layers show through to the layers beneath while others lie thick, feels like painting with a knife. I am more concerned with texture than anything else these days, so every scene gets at least six or seven layers before it looks like what I want (and some of the more tricky or crucial ones get 20 or more). The first draft is no longer the ugly lump of clay; it’s the underpainting.

Maybe 10 years from now I’ll think of some other physical process when I think about writing. Anyway, at the moment, it’s like painting. My scraping and reapplying and rescraping is one reason I’m much, much slower than I used to be. But I find it satisfying.

I don’t know why so many of us reach for other art forms when we think about how we write, or when we try to express it to other people. Maybe it’s because so much of the writing process happens invisibly inside our heads, but it can feel as energetic and taxing, as sensual and oppositional as working with some material, some medium that’s external to our minds. The book as an object sometimes feels like something physical we’ve worked and shaped but that is not the ink on paper, or the pixels, that we use to transmit it to someone else.

One bit of news to pass along: There’s a signed, personalized hardcover of Mercutio up for auction for Romancing the Vote, an excellent cause. The auction closes on July 5. I hope July is treating you well.