There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.
Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying.
There is no great writing, only great rewriting.
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.
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
The main reason for rewriting is not to achieve a smooth surface, but to discover the inner truth of your characters.
Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts.
I rewrote the ending of 'Farewell to Arms' 39 times before I was satisfied.
Books aren't written - they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it.
Rewriting is like scrubbing the basement floor with a toothbrush.
Rewriting is the essence of writing well - where the game is won or lost.
Writing is rewriting. A writer must learn to deepen characters, trim writing, intensify scenes. To fall in love with the first draft to the point where one cannot change it is to greatly enhance the prospects of never publishing.
When I say writing, O believe me, it is rewriting that I have chiefly in mind.
I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.
Rewriting is when writing really gets to be fun. . . . In baseball you only get three swings and you're out. In rewriting, you get almost as many swings as you want and you know, sooner or later, you'll hit the ball.
Good writing is rewriting.
I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.
My writing is a process of rewriting, of going back and changing and filling in. in the rewriting process you discover what's going on, and you go back and bring it up to that point.
More than a half, maybe as much as two-thirds of my life as a writer is rewriting. I wouldn't say I have a talent that's special. It strikes me that I have an unusual kind of stamina.
I can’t write five words but that I change seven.
I'm just trying to write a good story, strictly from imagination. People just think it's random, they don't see the rewriting, phrasing of characters, choosing the words, bringing the world to light in which the characters live in. That creates an illusion that this is real.
If there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. Everything comes out wrong with me at first; but when once objectified in a crude shape, I can torture and poke and scrape and pat it till it offends me no more.
I can't understand how anyone can write without rewriting everything over and over again.
There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them.
The best writing is rewriting.
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