Everyone Writes With AI. Almost Nobody Edits With It.

The blank page is the easy half. The leverage is in the red pen you're not using.

In 1980, an editor named Gordon Lish took a manuscript from a not-yet-famous writer and cut it roughly in half.

The writer was Raymond Carver. The book became What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. The spare, gutting style the literary world fell for, the one we now just call Carver, was substantially Lish's red pen. He cut some stories by nearly ha…