I keep returning to my unfinished, flawed, out-of-shape essays (and poems, and stories), and I try to be a reverse Dracula, biting them to make them new: a reverse Dracula, because I don’t want to turn the old essays into undead zombies—I want, instead, to restore the flawed essay’s latently valorous soul, infuse it with a life it might never have had, give it a reason to be giddy, to fly, or to enjoy its landlocked condition.

Read more here.