Fellow Cape Breton writer Frank Macdonald described MacLeod as a perfectionist. "He wouldn't set a story free," Macdonald said, "until he was convinced that it was ready." He added that MacLeod never rewrote a story. "He wrote a sentence, and then waited, then wrote another sentence." During a CBC Radio interview in 2011, MacLeod spoke about how he shaped his work. He explained that halfway through a story, he would write the final sentence. "I think of that as the last thing I'm going to say to the reader," he said. "I write it down and it serves as a lighthouse on the rest of my journey through the story."