Quotes About Revision

I always rewrite the very beginning of a novel. I rewrite the beginning as I write the ending, so I may spend part of morning writing the ending, the last 100 pages approximately, and then part of the morning revising the beginning. So the style of the novel has a consistency.

In 'Dark Skye,' I rewrote every one of the Pandemonia scenes over and over before I was happy with them - hundreds of pages are now sitting in a folder called 'Cuttings,' never to be read. Ouch!

I've learned to really love revision over the years and worked hard to build up my craft muscle to make my revisions less and less painful with each book.

It's never easy to adapt a book, especially as the author, because it's as if you're chopping off appendages. It really feels painful to decide what has to go.

The process of rewriting is enjoyable, because you're not in that existential panic when you don't have a novel at all.

Writing is thought crystalized on a piece of paper, which can then be reviewed.

Paper acts as an eraser on the mind, as soon as you look at what you've written.

Reshoots are par for the course on any film. For me, I kind of love it because, as an actor, you always feel that there was a way you could have done it differently. Being able to go back and do some stuff again is always a blessing in my eyes.

I never leave a sentence or a paragraph until I'm satisfied with it.

If you rewrite a paragraph fifty times and forty-nine of them are terrible, that's fine; you only need to get it right once.

There are writers whose first drafts are so lean, so skimpy, that they must go back and add words, sentences, paragraphs to make their fiction intelligible or interesting. I don't know any of these writers.

This does make me very very careful, particularly in the second draft, to get it right, because you do feel that somebody in the future who may be extremely important for everybody, is going to have me behind them, and this is a responsibility, a huge one.

I noticed that parts of the opposition have been hostile to any revision of the constitution.

Some stories or passages are more difficult and demand more fussing with than others, but, in general, I'm a two-draft writer rather than a six-draft writer, or whatever.

A satisfactory translation is not always possible, but a good translator is never satisfied with it. It can usually be improved. (Newmark)

although we have a substantial body of evidence to support this conclusion, and we hold it with a high degree of confidence, it remains possible, albeit extremely improbable, that new evidence or arguments may compel us to revise our view of this matter.

The extent of change is covered in this volume. It has necessitated extensive revision and the inclusion of much new data. I have also introduced material or reworked analyses in response to suggestions made by readers. Every chapter has been subject to some change. The principal features new to this edition include: â–  more comparative material, not

More often forecasts are made and then…nothing. Accuracy is seldom determined after the fact and is almost never done with sufficient regularity and rigor that conclusions can be drawn. The reason? Mostly it's a demand-side problem: The consumers of forecasting—governments, business, and the public—don't demand evidence of accuracy. So there is no measurement. Which means no revision. And without revision, there can be no improvement.

When the facts change, I change my mind," the legendary British economist John Maynard Keynes declared.

There are three different ways to cross out a misspelled word: with a straight line, a squiggly one, or by scratching out the word with your pencil so many times that it ends up looking like top-secret, heavily redacted, highly classified material that must never be found out or else you will be killed.

I have also time on my hands to correct my opinions, and polish my periods;

A good book isn't written, it's rewritten.

Good stories are not written, they are rewritten

I very seldom read back into what I've written.