Revision Quotes - Page 2

• Revision is its own reward.

  Marianne Moore

  Rewards

  Jean de La Fontaine, Marianne Moore (1954). “The fables of La Fontaine”

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• In revision, your imagination becomes deeply engaged with your material. It's when you come to know your characters and begin to perceive their motivations and values.

  John Dufresne

  Motivation, Character, Imagination

  Source: therumpus.net

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• In working on a poem, I love to revise. Lots of younger poets don't enjoy this, but in the process of revision I discover things

  Rita Dove

  Poet, Process, Enjoy

  Rita Dove, Earl G. Ingersoll (2003). “Conversations with Rita Dove”, p.136, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Revision, once well done, becomes a sort of automatic itch which you scratch in the next work without thinking about it.

  Romulus Linney

  Thinking, Scratches, Done

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• I think there simply comes a point at which you're beating your head against the wall with revision, when you're making something different but not better. For me, revision usually has more to do with making the language prettier, finding clearer images, using more active verbs.

  Mary J. Miller

  Wall, Thinking, Different

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I live by my own rules (reviewed, revised, and approved by my wife).. but still my own.

  Si Robertson

  Funny, Life, Marriage

  Si Robertson (2014). “Si-cology 1: Tales and Wisdom from Duck Dynasty’s Favorite Uncle”, p.192, Simon and Schuster

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• Real equality is immensely difficult to achieve, it needs continual revision and monitoring of distributions. And it does not provide buffers between members, so they are continually colliding or frustrating each other.

  Mary Douglas

  Real, Equality, Frustrated

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• The psyche of the individual is commensurate with the totality of creative energy. This requires a most radical revision of Western psychology.

  Stanislav Grof

  Creative, Psychology, Energy

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• There is an urgent need for a radical revision of our current concepts of the nature of consciousness and its relationship to matter and the brain.

  Stanislav Grof

  Brain, Needs, Matter

  Stanislav Grof (2000). “Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research”, p.230, SUNY Press

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• So for me the approach has become to go into a story not really sure of what I want to say, try to find some little seed crystal of interest, a sentence or an image or an idea, and as much as possible divest myself of any deep ideas about it. And then by this process of revision, mysteriously it starts to accrete meanings as you go.

  George Saunders

  Ideas, Trying, Stories

  Interview with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. January 18, 2013.

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• 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.

  Vikram Seth

  Character, Frustration, Peculiar

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• For me writing is an organic process that starts with engaging the language and then thinking about the structure of the novel as you move along. Especially in revision you start to notice correlations. Things come up, not self-consciously, because you're busy feeling your way through sentences and trying to push the language into new places.

  Dana Spiotta

  Moving, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• Each poem seems to demand its own formal approach. In both drafting and revision, I'll play around with line lengths and stanza formations, eventually letting the poem settle into what I think is its own best form.

  Allison Joseph

  Thinking, Play, Lines

  Source: atticusreview.org

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• I reserve the right to evolve. What I think and feel today is subject to revision tomorrow.

  Laurence Overmire

  Future, Thinking, Today

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• Revision means throwing out the boring crap and making what’s left sound natural.

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Mean, Sound, Boring

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• I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

  Truman Capote

  Believe, Writing, Editing

  Lawrence Grobel, Truman Capote (1986). “Conversations with Capote”, Plume

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• All the revision in the world will not save a bad first draft: for the architecture of the thing comes, or fails to come, in the first conception, and revision only affects the detail and ornament, alas!

  T. E. Lawrence

  Details, Ornaments, World

  Letter to Bruce Rogers, August 20, 1931.

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• There are days when the result is so bad that no fewer than five revisions are required. In contrast, when I'm greatly inspired, only four revisions are needed.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Writing, Four, Inspired

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• The contents of a house can trigger all sorts of revisions to family history.

  Louise Erdrich

  House, Triggers, Family History

  Louise Erdrich (2009). “The Painted Drum: A Novel”, p.29, Harper Collins

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• You're trying to make the language work, and your subconscious is being allowed to make the deeper, more profound connections. It's much better than going at it all frontally. But you can't conjure it in an intellectual way; it has to come out of another engagement, a more intuitive engagement. Revision is where the intellectual, analytical work happens. At least for me.

  Dana Spiotta

  Profound, Intellectual, Trying

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• One great aim of revision is to cut out. In the exuberance of composition it is natural to throw in - as one does in speaking - a number of small words that add nothing to meaning but keep up the flow and rhythm of thought. In writing, not only does this surplusage not add to meaning, it subtracts from it. Read and revise, reread and revise, keeping reading and revising until your text seems adequate to your thought.

  Jacques Barzun

  Reading, Writing, Cutting

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• Sometimes I would write while inspired and sometimes I would write through sheer force of will, and in revision the writing that I thought was "dead" very frequently turned out to be better because it was more free of ego.

  Jesse Michaels

  Writing, Ego, Force Of Will

  Source: therumpus.net

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• It was my dream, and probably the dream of every one of us, to bring about a revision of the Versailles Treaty by peaceful means, which was provided for in that very treaty.

  Hans Frank

  Dream, Peace, Mean

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• Stories, as much as we like to talk about them, retrospectively, as emanations of theme or worldview or intention, occur primarily as technical objects when they're being written. Or at least they do for me. They're the result of thousands of decisions made at speed during revision.

  George Saunders

  Decision, Stories, Speed

  "On 'Tenth of December': an interview with George Saunders". Interview with Deborah Treisman, www.newyorker.com. January 24, 2013.

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• Sometimes the best revision of a poem is a new poem.

  Marvin Bell

  Sometimes

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