Revise and Rewrite

 

 

Rewrite and revise. Do not be afraid to seize what you have and cut it to ribbons ... Good writing means good revising.

William Strunk, Jr.

 

I like revising much, much better than getting down a first draft. The first draft is just getting the pieces to the puzzle. Then I get to put the puzzle together!

Judy Blume

 

Our past is a novel that we are constantly revising.

Eric G. Wilson

 

Most writers want to share their essay or book much too quickly. Those who accept the pain of hard work and revising are those who get published.

Lee Gutkind

 

I think the hardest part of writing is revising. And by that I mean the following: A novelist has to create the piece of marble and then chip away to find the figure in it.

Chaim Potok

When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.

Stephen King

 

I love revising things, because you see how you can get the language to get closer to intention. You know there are three ways to say X thing, but one will say it better than the other two. And in saying it better, it gets you closer to something.

Claudia Rankine

 

Categorizing is necessary for humans, but it becomes pathological when the category is seen as definitive, preventing people from considering the fuzziness of boundaries, let alone revising their categories.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

 

The voice of a person thinking, discovering, revising, is ever-present without any loss in grace or ease.

Susan Stewart

 

I love revising. If you demystify the process, it comes down to four strategies: what can I do to make the draft better; what should I cut out to make it stronger; what do I need to do to clarify it; and finally, what should I reposition.

Wally Lamb

 

I do so much revising as I go along; I wonder how I could write books if I hadn't grown up in the computer age. I think I'd be a very different writer. I find myself cutting and pasting, changing things around and deleting whole paragraphs constantly.

Megan McCafferty

 

I love the students - they are remarkable, inspiring people. I would miss teaching if I stopped doing it. The kind of work I do is pretty diverse: I can cast a play while doing a polish of a screenplay, while thinking about a new play and revising another. In other words, the kind of work that I do during my work day is not just writing, yet it is all part of the job of being a playwright.

Donald Margulies

 

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