Quotes About Revision

With 'Broken Harbour,' a third of the way through, I worked it out and had to go back and bloody rewrite.

I have a hard time revising sentences, because I spend an inordinate amount of time on each sentence, and the sentence before it, and the sentence after it.

'One With You' was the hardest book I have ever written. I rewrote it three times.

I've never heard of a comedy that hasn't had reshoots, especially for the ending of a movie in a comedy.

I have never written anything in one draft, not even a grocery list, although I have heard from friends that this is actually possible.

You learn pretty quickly: if you fall in love with your edit, you're bound to be heartbroken because it will all be re-cut.

Ever since 'Strange Heaven,' I haven't really reread my old work. Not so much because I don't like the writer I was, or because I find flaws in the writing, but more because I get so burnt out on a novel once I've finished writing, revising, editing and copy editing it that I genuinely never want to look at it again after it's gone to press.

You have to write badly to write at all. If it's crappy, I will rewrite it later. But it will be mine. You can hear the resonance of an artist who goes into herself.

When a writer gets a second chance to look back on something, it's a great opportunity to say, 'Hey, this is really good, but we can do it even better.'

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and re-inscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.

This edition is based on Orwell's typescript of November 1948, amended according to his proof corrections and taking in a few readings that are deemed to be his from the American first edition.

scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

Un escritor más escrupuloso se preguntará ante cada una de sus frases, al menos, cuatro cosas: ¿qué trato de decir?; ¿con qué palabras puedo expresarlo?; ¿qué imagen o frase hecha lo dirá más claro?, y, por último, ¿tiene esta imagen la frescura suficiente para causar en el lector el efecto deseado? Y

To me, the process of writing is just reading what I've written and—like running your hand over one of those mod glass stovetops to find where the heat is—looking for where the energy is in the prose, then going in the direction of that. It's an exercise in being open to whatever is there.

Forbes had fully invested herself in her sentences. She had made them her own, agreed to live or die by them, taken total responsibility for them. How had she done this? I didn't know. But I do now: she'd revised them.

I always overwrite - really awful, long bits of script - and then I trim it down to the bare bones and then add a little bit to colour it in. At the end of all of my stories, I test for wordless comprehension. So I remove the text and see if it works by itself. And if it does, I feel that that's a successful story.

No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.

It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.

In doing everything, from coming up with the ideas and putting them on paper till doing the final edits, you are always thinking the next three steps, you're always thinking what next, what next, what next?

I write in the morning from about eight till noon, and sometimes again a bit in the afternoon. In the morning I start off by going over what I had done the previous day, which my wife has happily typed up for me.

I keep an elaborate calendar for my characters detailing on which dates everything happens. I'm constantly revising this as I go along. It gives me the freedom to intricately plot my story, knowing it will at least hold up on a timeline.

I rewrote the ending to 'Farewell to Arms,' the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.