Quotes About Manuscript

Don't do a hard sell or try to tell the agent that you're going to be a bestseller or the next John Grisham. This goes down very badly. If your work is good, then they are skilled enough to know this within a few pages.

When I finished graduate school, I had a master's of fine arts from a prestigious institution, a manuscript that would eventually become my first published book - and almost no marketable skills.

I tend to elongate the sentences as I'm writing and editing, and there is just something about the feeling of writing longhand that I really love.

I found the project to be a bit quiet (that is, dull), which may have led to the manuscript's current confabulation—a pseudo autobiography in which the speaker portrays herself as a fifteen-year-old girl/cheetah amalgam.

little-known fact, though not unacknowledged by my scientist's eye, is that the ceiling of Grand Central is actually backward. It is a mirror image of the night sky; lore holds that the artist was working from a medieval manuscript that showed the heavens not from within but from without—not mankind's view but God's. I

I came the second I heard," she told me breathlessly. "I can't believe it! Until this time we've only had the Boscana manuscript as any proof this religion arose before the introduction of Christianity and not in response to it!

You can't really put a book on the Internet. Three companies have offered to put books by me on the Net, and I said, 'If you can make something that has a nice jacket, nice paper with that nice smell, then we'll talk.' All the computer can give you is a manuscript. People don't want to read manuscripts. They want to read books.

I write in longhand on yellow legal pads.

I always write on unlined typing paper and write the first draft in longhand, using cheap Bic pens. I try to write about four pages a day, which usually yields a first draft in six months. I don't plot ahead of time, so I'm flying by the seat of my pants for the first draft.

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.

As an unpublished, nonprofessional writer working on my first novel, I nevertheless had access to extremely talented people who would help make my manuscript better, people who've made careers out of providing careful, constructive criticism to writers. I'm tremendously grateful to them.

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.

Opowie?? goÅ›cia Iwanowego stawaÅ'a siÄ™ coraz zawilsza, coraz wiÄ™cej w niej byÅ'o niedomówieÅ". MówiÅ' coÅ› o zacinajÄ…cym deszczu i o rozpaczy panujÄ…cej w cichej piwniczej przystani, o tym, ?e dokÄ…dÅ› jeszcze chodziÅ' z tym rÄ™kopisem. WykrzykiwaÅ' szeptem, ?e bynajmniej nie wini tej, która go zagrzewaÅ'a do walki, o nie, nie wini jej!

The first draft is usually junk. You have to work on it seven to eight times.

As an editor, I read Charlotte Rogan's amazing debut novel, 'The Lifeboat ' when it was still in manuscript. I read it in one night, and I really wanted my company to publish it, but we lost it to another house. It's such a wonderful combination of beautiful writing and suspenseful storytelling.

I do believe you would be perfectly happy shut up in your study with your rolls of manuscript all your life, without seeing another human being save a servant to bring you in bread and fruit and water twice a day.

THE FOLLOWING WORK was found in the library of an ancient Catholic family in the north of England. It was printed at Naples, in the black letter, in the year 1529. How much sooner it was written does not appear. The principal incidents are such as were believed in the darkest ages of Christianity; but the language and conduct have nothing that savours of barbarism. The style is the purest Italian.

Olivier took a deep breath, then turned and bowed in farewell. Gersonides nodded in return, then thought of something. The manuscript you brought me, by that bishop. It argues that understanding is more important than movement. That action is virtuous only if it reflects pure comprehension, and that virtue comes from the comprehension, not the action. Olivier frowned. So? Dear boy, I must tell you a secret. What? I do believe it is wrong.

What puzzles me most is the disappearance of the Diatessaron and where it might be now.

Self-pity needed her full attention, and only in solitude could she breathe life into the lacerating details, but at the instant of her assent—how the tilt of a skull could change a life!—Lola had picked up the bundle of Briony's manuscript from

Self-pity needed her full attention, and only in solitude could she breathe life into the lacerating details, but at the instant of her assent—how the tilt of a skull could change a life!—Lola had picked up the bundle of Briony's manuscript from the

A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.

Agents and publishers only want one thing - good writing.

I get to a certain point, and I think in a novel it's about the third draft, when I want other eyes on it.