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Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing. -- Bernard Malamud
Phases of the creative process: Preparation-gathering impressions Incubation-letting go of certainties Immersion/Illumination-creative intervention/risk Revision-conscious structuring and editing of creative material. -- Gail Sheehy
Revision is its own reward. -- Marianne Moore
Revision is a good impulse to have. -- Rigoberto Gonzalez
Half my life is an act of revision. -- John Irving
I work hard, I work very hard. All the books at least 30 revisions. -- Ha Jin
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Revision is not going back and fussing around, but going forward into the process of creation -- May Sarton
Revision is the heart of writing. Every page I do is done over seven or eight times. -- Patricia Reilly Giff
The primary treatment modality for DID is individual outpatient psychotherapy.Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision -- James A. Chu
I write a lot in my head. The revision goes on internally. It's not spontaneous and it doesn't have a schedule. -- Jamaica Kincaid
Revision, once well done, becomes a sort of automatic itch which you scratch in the next work without thinking about it. -- Romulus Linney
The psyche of the individual is commensurate with the totality of creative energy. This requires a most radical revision of Western psychology. -- Stanislav Grof
Revision plays a very large role in writing. Sometimes it seems to be all revision. And the longer I write, the more I revise-until it is completely right. -- Ellen Hunnicutt
The company calls it 'downsizing' or 'rightsizing.' My own informal "Name the Layoff" contest produced some other euphemisms: Retroactive Hiring Freeze, Resume Revision Days, Amway Opportunity Time, and Corporation Lite. -- Dale Dauten
Students need to be reminded that revision isn't merely making a few cosmetic changes. Revision is seeing and then reseeing our words and practicing strategies that make a difference in our writing. -- Georgia Heard
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
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
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
I don't have a schedule, but I can write for hours non-stop. If I'm drafting a book, I try and do a chapter a day. I dislike first drafts. Revision is a lot more fun, but it takes years. -- Sefi Atta
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
Treatment for DID should adhere to the basic principles of psychotherapy and psychiatric medical management, and therapists should use specialized techniques only as needed to address specific dissociative symptomatology.Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision -- James A. Chu
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Revision is not the end of the creative process, but a new beginning. It's a chance not just to clean up and edit, but to open up and discover. The energetic prose comes about from all the energy that went into crafting it, I suppose. -- John Dufresne
Writing is revision. All prose responds to work. -- Tracy Kidder
I reserve the right to evolve. What I think and feel today is subject to revision tomorrow, -- Laurence Overmire
That's the magic of revisions - every cut is necessary, and every cut hurts, but something new always grows. -- Kelly Barnhill
Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. -- T. S. Eliot
The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. -- J. R. R. Tolkien
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
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
Anarchism, to me, means not only the denial of authority, not only a new economy, but a revision of the principles of morality. It means the development of the individual as well as the assertion of the individual. It means self-responsibility, and not leader worship. -- Voltairine de Cleyre
I spent my entire youth writing slowly with revisions and endless rehashing speculation and deleting and got so I was writing one sentence a day and the sentence had no FEELING. Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings. -- Jack Kerouac
Memory offers up its gifts only when jogged by something in the present. It isn't a storehouse of fixed images and words, but a dynamic associative network in the brain that is never quiet and is subject to revision each time we retrieve an old picture or old words. -- Siri Hustvedt
In the eyes of others a man is a poet if he has written one good poem. In his own he is only a poet at the moment when he is making his last revision to a new poem. The moment before, he was still only a potential poet; the moment after, he is a man who has ceased to write poetry, perhaps forever. -- W. H. Auden
It takes a fearless, unflinching love and deep humility to accept the universe as it is. The most effective way he knew to accomplish that, the most powerful tool at his disposal, was the scientific method, which over time winnows out deception. It can't give you absolute truth because science is a permanent revolution, always subject to revision, but it can give you successive approximations of reality. -- Ann Druyan
We were revisionists; what we revised was ourselves. -- Margaret Atwood
In writing, you must kill all your darlings. -- William Faulkner
SAINT, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. -- Ambrose Bierce
Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon. -- Raymond Chandler
The more you leave out, the more you highlight what you leave in. -- Henry Green
Skepticism is an important historical tool. It is the starting point of all revision of hitherto accepted history. -- Samuel Eliot Morison
People wait until they have a need for some history and then they customize it to suit their purposes. -- Neal Stephenson
There is a saying: Genius is perseverance. While genius does not consist entirely of editing, without editing it's pretty useless. -- Susan Bell
Serbia will neither allow a revision of history, nor will it forget who are the main culprits in World War I. -- Ivica Dacic
Then based on her own recent experience, the Divine Presence had a cruelly perverse sense of humor and His Grand Plan needed drastic revision. -- Judith McNaught
In my experience, cutting back is the crucial act that allows the vitality, precision and emotional heart of a piece of writing to emerge. -- Pamela Erens
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
The rise of capitalist practice and morality brought with it a radical revision of how the commons are treated, and also of how they are conceived. -- Noam Chomsky
Writers know all the good reasons for subjecting their work to a sharp trim. Early drafts are notorious for repetition, indirection and overdevelopment of the trivial. -- Pamela Erens
When you print out your manuscript and read it, marking up with a pen, it sometimes feels like a criminal returning to the scene of a crime. -- Don Roff
My reputation for writing quickly and effortlessly notwithstanding, I am strongly in favor of intelligent, even fastidious revision, which is, or certainly should be, an art in itself. -- Joyce Carol Oates
I've found the best way to revise your own work is to pretend that somebody else wrote it and then to rip the living shit out of it. -- Don Roff
I am hard at work on the second draft ... Second draft is really a misnomer as there are a gazillion revisions, large and small, that go into the writing of a book. -- Libba Bray
It's just as well that I write in the same facile way wherever I am - no blocks or anguish, no contemplation, no elaborate revision, no need for love-tokens or nice views. -- Peter York
To look at the work of your peers, and learn how to explain with kindness and precision, the nature of their mistakes is, in fact, how you learn to diagnose your own work. -- Steve Almond
I'm a passionate believer in revision, and a lot of my writing gets done during revision process. It isn't just tweaking: I tend to break it apart and remake it every time I do a new draft. -- John Jeremiah Sullivan
Sometimes a fresh perspective is all you need to get a second wind on the revision process. Try viewing your material on a different medium; it will shed a new light on the inconsistencies in the dark. -- V.S. Watson
There has been so much recent talk of progress in the areas of curriculum innovation and textbook revision that few people outside the field of teaching understand how bad most of our elementary school materials still are. -- Jonathan Kozol
Wonder blasts the soul - that is, the spiritual - and the skeleton, the body - the material. Wonder interprets life through the eyes of eternity while enjoying the moment, but never lets the moment's revision exhaust the eternal. -- Ravi Zacharias
The new 'Joy' was needed for a number of reasons. Recent developments in nutrition and new ingredients were two of the major reasons for the revision. One of the other big reasons was America's new love for big flavors. Yay! -- Irma S. Rombauer
Allen Ginsberg instructs: "First thought, best thought." Oh, to have my every spontaneous thought count as poetry! No draft after draft like a draft horse.Clayton Eshleman, laughing, said, "'First thought best thought' is not 'First word best word ' Ginsberg does rewrite. I'm sure he does. -- Maxine Hong Kingston
The backbone of any improvement of governance, its development as well as its protection from any form of wastage or excessiveness, is a mechanism to place laws under the microscope of revision and modernization until they resonate in tune with the methodological development and new administrative technologies. -- Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan
Lie naked on the table, and let them cut. Criticism is surgery, and humility is the anesthetic that allows you to tolerate it. In the end, the process will make you a stronger, more flexible, and truly creative writer. It will replace attitude with genuine confidence, and empty arrogance with artistry. -- Molly Cochran
The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which means it must be exercised in a disciplined way, day in and day out, by writing, failing, succeeding and revising."[The Writer's Digest Interview: Stephen King & Jerry B. Jenkins (Jessica Strawser, Writer's Digest, May/June 2009)] -- Stephen King
I don't feel I write fast. I write in longhand and do so much revision. On the page, it's so old-fashioned. I could write a whole novel on scrap paper, scribbles and things. I keep looking at it and something develops. For me, using a word processor would mean staring at a screen for too many hours. -- Joyce Carol Oates
In a poem, the words happen; they just come. I let them. Otherwise, I wouldn't write. To interfere with what is happening is to distort the poem. Just a very small degree of intelligence and supervision is necessary. Very tactful. Any revision later that violates the text as it came, that begins rewriting the words, is fake. -- Louis Dudek
Obama promised a return to competence and confidence and asked the nation to believe again that the government could do big things well. In the end, he got his big thing, a once-in-a-generation revision to the basic social compact, a commitment of health coverage to nearly all Americans. He has yet to prove he can do it well. -- Nancy Gibbs
When we can commit a crime, we can also trigger debate. Cases go to courts. Media start covering the cases. But once you build smart environments where, if you meet a certain probabilistic profile, you won't even be allowed to board a bus, let alone commit a crime, we're perpetuating existing laws so they face no challenges or revision. -- Evgeny Morozov
I'm obsessive. That's the word for me. I obsess - perhaps to the point where it's moderately dysfunctional. I tend to put a book through about 100 revisions. If anything, that's an understatement. If there's another author out there who does this sort of revision, I would really like to meet him. Maybe we could form some sort of support group. -- Patrick Rothfuss
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
The common workshop goal is revision, not suicide. -- Hilma Wolitzer
Freedom is whatever the president says it is, pending revision. -- James Bovard
Sometimes the best revision of a poem is a new poem. -- Marvin Bell
Every success story is a tale of constant adaption, revision and change. -- Richard Branson
I love revision. Where else can spilled milk be turned into ice cream? -- Katherine Paterson
The great thing about revision is that it's your opportunity to fake being brilliant. -- Will Shetterly
Words and sentences are subjects of revision; paragraphs and whole compositions are subjects of prevision. -- Barrett Wendell
Code is followed by commentary, and commentary by revision, and thus the task is never done. -- Benjamin Cardozo
Through revision, I enter the realm of the unspeakable and find the words that have eluded me. -- Terry Tempest Williams
I'm an obsessive writer who needs and loves revision. Writing helps me learn and helps me teach. -- Kiese Laymon
Skepticism is an important historical tool. It is the starting point of all revision of hitherto accepted history. -- Samuel Eliot Morison
My life is constant revision but it's not revision, a lot of it is for the first time. -- Robin Ince
Half my life is an act of revision; more than half the act is performed with small changes. -- John Irving
I am particularly horrified by the use of propaganda and the manipulation of the truth and the revision of history. -- Hillary Clinton
God Himself has reserved no right of revision of His own laws nor is there any need for Him for any such revision. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Methods and conclusions formed by half the race only, must necessarily require revision as the other half of humanity rises into conscious responsibility. -- Elizabeth Blackwell
All human plans [are] subject to ruthless revision by Nature, or Fate, or whatever one preferred to call the powers behind the Universe. -- Arthur C. Clarke
This idea of repetition and revision is central to my working process-this idea of stacking and layering and building up densities and recoveries. -- Ellen Gallagher
What force is yanking at our sleeves? This process of self-revision and self-correction is so common we don't even notice. But it's a miracle. -- Steven Pressfield
I place a lot of emphasis on process and revision because I believe that all of my students can become better writers through hard work. -- Cate Marvin
Youth is the season of receptivity, and should be devoted to acquirement; and manhood of power--that demands an earnest application. Old age is for revision. -- Christian Nestell Bovee
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
This assumes an upward revision of the European Budget, which is precisely what Jacques Chirac refuses to do. On the contrary, he has demanded a reduction. -- Laurent Fabius
A novel which has been too much worked over often goes flat, and no amount of laborious revision can take the place of careful planning beforehand. -- Sheila Kaye-Smith
Credit ratings and risk weightings must undergo a thorough process of review and revision. No security or instrument on the planet should have a zero risk weighting. -- Paul Singer
I'm perfectly proud of the work I did, looking back at it. I know I've had a bit of a revision since my 'Big Finish' stories came out. -- Colin Baker
Oh how I wish I could be as obsessive as Carrie from 'Homeland' when I'm writing a book! That would save me a lot of trouble during the revision process. -- Edan Lepucki
This revision of the Constitution will not be perfect. But at least the Constitution will not be inflexible. It will be a step towards the Social Europe which we wish. -- Laurent Fabius
After Ive sent my revised draft to my agent and editor, they suggest more improvement sand again, this revision phase can take anywhere from a few hours to a few months. -- Margaret Haddix
After I've sent my revised draft to my agent and editor, they suggest more improvement sand again, this revision phase can take anywhere from a few hours to a few months. -- Margaret Haddix
My YouTube videos have literally millions of views... Yet I'm still airbrushed out of the BBC Stalinist revision of history; the chart shows have been instructed not to play my music! -- Jonathan King
The process of democracy is one of change. Our laws are not frozen into immutable form, they are constantly in the process of revision in response to the needs of a changing society. -- Thurgood Marshall
History isn't all fact--it's just the story the victors tell to keep themselves in power. And it's been a slow revision. The more time passes, the easier it becomes to reinvent the past. -- Heather Anastasiu
Embrace the melancholic voice completely in the drafting stages, to explore it for all it's worth. Then, in revision, privilege craft over pure feeling. Write the work that someone besides you will want to read. -- David Starkey

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