Quotes About Revision

Only in your imagination can you revise.

It's easier to revise lousy writing than to revise a blank sheet of paper.

Remember, it is no sign of weakness or defeat that your manuscript ends up in need of major surgery. This is a common occurrence in all writing, and among the best writers.

All writing is rewriting.

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.

Every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist.

I keep going over a sentence. I nag it, gnaw it, pat and flatter it.

It's easy to shoot down good ideas, interesting policies, or worthwhile experiments by assuming that whatever you decide now needs to work for years on end. It's just not so, especially for a small business. If circumstances change, your decisions can change. Decisions are temporary.

On Writing Well by William Zinsser The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E. B. White Revising Prose by Richard Lanham

In this Postscript I distinguish references back to the revised text of this book by placing these in italics thus (262), from references to the works of other authors under discussion, which are thus (p. 162). account

when you go over it, cut out everything you can. The main thing is to know what to leave out. The way you tell whether you're going good is by what you can throw away.

And remember always, "More ought to be scratched out than left.

I have never met a writer who didn't need an editor, and an editor without a writer is a person without a job. It is a fraught and often-imperfect relationship, of course, dating back to the beginning of time. You remember; after God moved upon the darkness, he proclaimed, "I've put in place some very wondrous illumination here!" And Mrs. God gently suggested the more pithy: 'Let there be light.

Ev'n copious Dryden wanted, or forgot,The last and greatest art—the art to blot.

SuperMemo is based on the insight that there is an ideal moment to practice what you've learned. Practice too soon and you waste your time. Practice too late and you've forgotten the material and have to relearn it. The right time to practice is just at the moment you're about to forget.

Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing.

An attempt is already underway to revise history - to leave the impression that the former president had nothing to do with Watergate. But there is no doubt about his obstruction of justice after the Watergate break-in.

A lot of what we do in the studio on a day-to-day basis is you try to cast a line as far out as you can out into unknown waters and reel it back in, cut out stuff that isn't working, cut out stuff that isn't connecting to people.

I would honestly be elated if I could wave a magic wand and eradicate my back catalog and then have a fresh crack at some of those ideas.

If you look at 'Blade Runner,' it's been cut sixteen ways from Sunday, and there are all kinds of different versions of it.

Get your butt in a chair and write. If it comes out weak or bad or clunky or ordinary, then accept that this happens to everyone. Everyone. Get it down, get it done, and fix it in the rewrite. Just like everyone from Stephen King to J. K. Rowling to Chuck Palahniuk does.

It is a bad plan that admits of no modification.

I work very deliberately, with a plan. But sometimes I come to a point that I planned as the end and it needs softening. Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep - it can't be done abruptly.

Revision has its own peculiar pleasures and its own peculiar frustrations. The ground rules are already established; the characters already exist. You don't have to bring the characters to life, but you do have to make them more convincing.