Quotes About Revision

Como Keynes dijo una vez, cuando los hechos cambian uno debe cambiar de opinión.

Movies are not finished. They are abandoned. A movie is never finished.

Keep your hands moving. Writing is rewriting.

I listen to a lot of different stuff, from Mozart to Johnny Dowd to Monster Magnet. I don't listen to music while I'm writing a draft, but I do listen to it when I'm revising.

It's always hard for a writer to make herself into a character; I had to figure out what my defining characteristics were, and that's something I had to work through multiple drafts to figure out.

Half my life is an act of revision.

When you see two writers named on a movie, one of them did some drafts and got the boot.

As Stephen King says, "No one gets it right the first time." We all edit, we all revise—what's the saying in the military? "Embrace the suck.

Somedays you have to write even when you think you're putting out crap. You just need to tell yourself that you'll fix the problems later, and by then, they might not even be problems anymore. The challenge of writing a novel has always been to let loose with a beautifully flawed first draft, and to constantly fight belief you're chiseling words in stone each time you type.

You are not Proust. Do not write long sentences. If they come into your head, write them, but then break them down. Do not be afraid to repeat the subject twice, and stay away from too many pronouns and subordinate clauses.

History often has a difficult time catching up to the events it records.

intend to correct details of the history that was compiled by my companions, the three Castilian

The first draft is the child's draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later.

You keep working on your piece over and over, trying to get the sections and paragraphs and sentences and the whole just right, but there's a point at which you can tell you've begun hurting the work with your perfectionism. Then you have to release the work to new eyes.

It was that ugly moment when you had to back up through time inside your head, and reframe everything you thought you knew about somebody. You had to revise reality after the fact. At least the reality you thought you knew.

Un autor î?i stric? opera dac? o public? într-o edi?ie rev?zut?, chiar dac? din punct de vedere poetic a devenit acum mai bun?. Prima impresie e cea hot?râtoare, ?i omul e astfel alc?tuit, încât îl poti convinge de cele mai nemaipomenite lucruri; totul se lipe?te imediat de suflet, dar vai de acela care vrea sa cure?e ?i s? ?tearg? cea a fost lipit.

The stories of our lives, far from being fixed narratives, are under constant revision. The slender threads of causality are rewoven and reinterpreted as we attempt to explain to ourselves and others how we became the people we are.

In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigour it will give your style.

A really well-done first draft of a book bares your soul. The purpose of revision is so that everyone who reads the published version believes you were writing about theirs.

The ideas have to be so good that it's possible they have never thought of them before. I write, let it sit, rewrite, let other people look at them sometimes, and finally send.

I do a lot of rewriting. It's very painful.

There is no such thing as history undistorted. Decisive transformations of meaning occurred, and are occurring still.

You write your first draft with your heart, and you rewrite with your head.

When I write, I tend to read it out loud to myself after. I'm a very uncomfortable reader, so it creates a distance between the text and me - it is a new way to see it.