Quotes About Revision

'A Fair Maiden' existed in notes and sketches for perhaps a year. When I traveled, I would take along with me my folder of notes - 'ideas for stories.' Eventually, I began to write it and wrote it fairly swiftly - in perhaps two months of fairly intense writing and rewriting. Most of my time writing is really re-writing.

The rise of capitalist practice and morality brought with it a radical revision of how the commons are treated, and also of how they are conceived.

I treat recorded tapes the way a film director treats his rushes.

I find that when you read a script, or rewrite something, or look at something that's been gone over, you can tell, like rings on a tree, by how bad it is, how long it's been in development.

Even after the text is written, there are a tremendous number of stages along the way to the finished book. If a publisher cares about the finished product, none of them will be omitted.

I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.

But usually I begin things through a drawing, so a lot of things are worked out in the drawing. But even then, I still allow for and want to make changes.

Edit until your fingers bleed, then take a few deep breaths and edit some more...

Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny — and also in a willingness to revise or abandon your theories when the tests fail (as they usually do).

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

Waking up from the cultural trance may require you to challenge your most fundamental beliefs and step outside of societal norms. When this happens, you discover new insights about yourself and typically go through a revision of who you are and what your relationship with the Earth is.

I have to do draft after draft... It takes me a long time, but I love doing it, and I have to do it every day, or I feel slack.

Sometimes the characters develop almost without your knowing it. You find them doing things you hadn't planned on, and then I have to go back to page 42 and fix things. I'm not recommending it as a way to write. It's very sloppy, but it works for me.

I find that I am much slower in the beginning of a book. I am thinking of the plot, of the characters and who they are, and where they are going. I often throw out a lot of the writing I start with, because the characters and plot improve as I write. Or perhaps I should say it is my hope they will improve as I write.

I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to get the first draft. I can write more quickly than I can read.

When I write, I feel like an optometrist, constantly flipping between lenses and asking, 'Is this better? Is this?' Slowly, the work comes into focus.

I shoot a scene, edit it, and then, two days later, I doubt whether or not it has turned out right. I reshoot a small part of it, go back to the first edit of it, and do all sorts of things.

It's funny because you know the novel process: you get the drafts, you get the galley, and then you get the galley proofs. You have opportunities to change things all along. But the further along in the process you go, the more careful you have to be in making those changes, and the smaller the changes have to be.

Screenwriting is like ironing. You move forward a little bit and go back and smooth things out.

My editor's main job is to cut down my worldbuilding. There's so much fun stuff in there, you know?

Reading this dialogue did something good for me. It made me think very hard about this book and revise my thinking about it, as literature has done in my life before. When you associate your mind with greats, your mind improves, your mind goes to new places. As the Jewish Kabbalists said, it's the white between the letters, not the black ink you see, that is important. That's something very hard to comprehend unless you've thought about mysticism.

But Josef does not feel sick. He feels clearheaded. To his mind the nostalgic insufficiency proves the paltry value of his former life. So I revise my diagnosis: "The patient is suffering from masochistic distortion of memory.

I love editing, and I don't mind when things are edited and you can see the editing.

I love the edited version of it.