Rewriting quotes:

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Rewriting is like scrubbing the basement floor with a toothbrush. -- Peter Murphy
Rewriting to me means, if I work on it for three days, I've rewritten it. -- Jules Shear
Rewriting is the essence of writing well - where the game is won or lost. -- William Zinsser
Writing for me is largely about rewriting. -- Khaled Hosseini
Rewriting is the crucible where books are born. -- Cathryn Louis
[Rewriting is] a whole other art form; it's about craftsmanship. -- Sam Shepard
I didn't know anything about writing a screenplay, but somehow I ended up rewriting a screenplay. -- Kate DiCamillo
I work very hard on the writing, writing and rewriting and trying to weed out the lumber. -- David McCullough
Rewriting the negative beliefs you have learned is the essence of becoming the director of your life. -- Deborah Day
Rewriting isn't just about dialogue; it's the order of the scenes, how you finish a scene, how you get into a scene. -- Tom Stoppard
Rewriting is a large part of the whole job. And get rid of stuff that's not working. Just pare it down until it's a beautiful thing you can hand in. -- Kurt Loder
Rewriting is a large part of the whole job. And get rid of stuff that's not working. Just pare it down until it's a beautiful thing you can hand in, probably late, to your editor. -- Kurt Loder
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. -- John Irving
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. -- Neil Simon
Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it's where the game is won or lost. The idea is hard to accept. We all have emotional equity in our first draft; we can't believe that it wasn't born perfect. But the odds are close to 100 percent that it wasn't. -- William Zinsser
Heinlein's Rules for Writers Rule One: You Must Write Rule Two: Finish What Your Start Rule Three: You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial Order Rule Four: You Must Put Your Story on the Market Rule Five: You Must Keep it on the Market until it has Sold -- Robert A. Heinlein
The biggest challenge for me has been in coping with my perfectionism. I have a stiflingly hard time moving forward in a project if it's not 'just right' all along the way. The trap I so easily fall into is rewriting and rewriting the same scenes over and over to make them perfect, instead of continuing on into the wild unknown of the story. -- Laini Taylor
Writing is rewriting what you have rewritten. -- Paul Engle
There is no great writing, only great rewriting. -- Louis D. Brandeis
There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting. -- Robert Graves
Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts. -- Larry L. King
Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying. -- John Updike
Life is like a typographical error: we're constantly writing and rewriting things over each other. -- Bret Easton Ellis
The main reason for rewriting is not to achieve a smooth surface, but to discover the inner truth of your characters. -- Saul Bellow
Fiction does not spring into the world fully grown, like Athena. It is the process of writing and rewriting that makes a fiction original, if not profound. -- John Gardner
Dreaming and hoping won't produce a piece of work; only writing, rewriting and rewriting (if necessary)- a devoted translation of thoughts and dreams into words on paper will result in a story. -- Roberta Gellis
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. -- Richard North Patterson
Another trick in software is to avoid rewriting the software by using a piece that's already been written, so called component approach which the latest term for this in the most advanced form is what's called Object Oriented Programming. -- Bill Gates
The elevator shaft was a kind of heat sink. Hot food was cold by the time it arrived. Cold food got colder. No one knew what would happen to ice cream, but it would probably involve some rewriting of the laws of thermodynamics. -- Terry Pratchett
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 I can torture and poke and scrape and pat it till it offends me no more. -- William James
Writing a first draft is like groping one's way into a dark room, or overhearing a faint conversation, or telling a joke whose punchline you've forgotten. As someone said, one writes mainly to rewrite, for rewriting and revising are how one's mind comes to inhabit the material fully. -- Ted Solotaroff
On the one occasion where I did try writing a screenplay, I found the rewriting just unendurable. -- Alan Moore
Directors sometimes have good ideas that I wished I'd had, not on rewriting but simply on staging. -- Tom Stoppard
The process of rewriting is enjoyable, because you're not in that existential panic when you don't have a novel at all. -- Rose Tremain
Artistry is important. Skill, hard work, rewriting, editing, and careful, careful craft: All of these are necessary. These are what separate the beginners from experienced artists. -- Sarah Kay
I love rewriting because that is where and how you discover the story. It's like you have this skeleton, and you get to put flesh on it and hair and clothes and really wonderful jewelry. -- Caroline Leavitt
When you perform in front of an audience after only two days of rehearsal, you're flying by the seat of your pants - particularly when they're rewriting the show right up to the moment the camera goes on. -- Michael Richards
I do not set specific work hours as some writers do. I generally stay with a chapter until I am satisfied, do very little rewriting, and if a scene is going well, I've been known to keep night owl hours. -- Sharon Kay Penman
Oh, I do a tremendous amount of rewriting. I just obsessively rewrite. Although sometimes there are sections, sometimes you're just lucky and a paragraph will just kind of come out. And that's great. But that's not ordinary in a day's work. -- Elizabeth Strout
I rewrite my books many times before submitting them, and after my editor takes a look I wind up rewriting some more! It's a good thing I learned at an early age to keep on trying. Stick to it, and eventually you'll get there. -- Wendelin Van Draanen
Almost all the producers I know and dig, like Quincy Jones or Brian Eno, are really musicians first. I'm a composer, an orchestrator, an arranger and a musician first. I know how to write and rewrite songs, and the genius is really in the rewriting. -- Nile Rodgers
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. -- Eric Jerome Dickey
In my office in Florida I have, I think, 30 manuscript piles around the room. Some are screenplays or comic books or graphic novels. Some are almost done. Some I'm rewriting. If I'm working with a co-writer, they'll usually write the first draft. And then I write subsequent drafts. -- James Patterson
If I were rewriting 'Love, Medicine & Miracles,' I might consider changing its title to 'The Side Effects of Cancer.' Healing is hard work, as is any change one must make in one's life. I and others have learned, however, that the side effects of cancer may not all be bad ones. -- Bernie Siegel
Writing by myself, I spread that out more. I'll spend more time on a song then. I'm more critical about it, because there's no one else in the room to tell me, 'That's really not translating. I'm not getting what you're saying.' So, I'm constantly rewriting it, thinking, 'No, that's fine,' and going back. -- Hunter Hayes
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
A Fair Maiden' existed in notes and sketches for perhaps a year. When I traveled, I would take along with me my folder of notes - 'ideas for stories.' Eventually, I began to write it and wrote it fairly swiftly - in perhaps two months of fairly intense writing and rewriting. Most of my time writing is really re-writing. -- Joyce Carol Oates
After 'Divergent,' I got a job rewriting a sci-fi script at Paramount. I think they really liked what I did, so I got a call saying, 'We're about to shoot 'Ninja Turtles' in three or four months; do you wanna come in and do a little work on the script?' That was the beginning of a many-month 'Ninja Turtle' odyssey. -- Evan Daugherty
The purest case of an intelligence explosion would be an Artificial Intelligence rewriting its own source code. The key idea is that if you can improve intelligence even a little, the process accelerates. It's a tipping point. Like trying to balance a pen on one end - as soon as it tilts even a little, it quickly falls the rest of the way. -- Eliezer Yudkowsky
I once wrote a short story called 'The Best Blues Singer in the World,' and it went like this: 'The streets that Balboa walked were his own private ocean, and Balboa was drowning.' End of story. That says it all. Nothing else to say. I've been rewriting that same story over and over again. All my plays are rewriting that same story. -- August Wilson
Good writing is rewriting. -- Truman Capote
The best writing is rewriting. -- E. B. White
Good writing is essentially rewriting. -- Roald Dahl
Rebels revel in rewriting reality's restrictions. -- Ryan Lilly
The only kind of writing is rewriting. -- Ernest Hemingway
There is no great writing, only great rewriting. -- Louis D. Brandeis
The book really comes to life in the rewriting. -- Philip Roth
The past is a script we are constantly rewriting. -- Michael Moorcock
There is no good writing; there is only good rewriting. -- Louis D. Brandeis
Particularly in my early days, I did very little rewriting. -- Jimmy Webb
Too many are focused on rewriting the past, invent the future! -- Philippe Kahn
When rewriting, move quickly. It's a little like cutting your own hair. -- Robert Stone
Maybe the key to finding the perfect song is simply rewriting the lyrics. -- Kandi Steiner
I can't understand how anyone can write without rewriting everything over and over again. -- Leo Tolstoy
The New York Times, whose editorial department sounds like Cotton Mather rewriting Eleanor Roosevelt... -- William F. Buckley, Jr.
Writing in journalism teaches you to be very comfortable taking criticism, being edited, and rewriting. -- Neil Drumming
You let the story cool off and then, instead of rewriting it, you relive it. -- Ray Bradbury
There are three primal urges in human beings: food, sex, and rewriting some else's play. -- Romulus Linney
I never really like it when other writers talk about coming in behind people and rewriting. -- Tony Gilroy
Studying writing to me means reading and also rewriting obsessively. That's the best way to learn. -- Jami Attenberg
Should we be rewriting history just to make people feel good? That's not history, that's psychiatry. -- Ed Koch
When I say writing, O believe me, it is rewriting that I have chiefly in mind. -- Robert Louis Stevenson
I still write with pen and paper and have someone type it on a computer. But rewriting I do by hand. -- Natalie Goldberg
Sometimes I think I'd be perfectly happy to go on rewriting 'Tipping the Velvet' forever because it was so much fun. -- Sarah Waters
The biggest difference between a writer and a would-be writer is their attitude toward rewriting. . . . Unwillingness to revise usually signals an amateur. -- Sol Stein
We're the new power, come to replace the old. Cameras in the head, children with microchips, spin doctors rewriting reality as it happens. -- Grant Morrison
As you continue writing and rewriting, you begin to see possibilities you hadn't seen before. Writing a poem is always a process of discovery. -- Robert Hayden
We are redefining terms and rewriting laws and removing fences everywhere you turn, and we seem to think we can do that with impunity. -- Ravi Zacharias
Hillary has already gotten a record $8 million advance from Simon & Schuster for the book -- reportedly the most anyone has ever received for rewriting history. -- Ann Coulter
Writing and rewriting are the same thing to me. I don't believe what Allen Ginsberg said that "first thought, then - " I just don't believe that. -- Lynne Tillman
The writing process is not just putting down one page after another-it's a lot of writing and then rewriting, restructuring the story, changing the way things come together. -- Rebecca Stead
...but I could not sleep without proper covering and spent the rest of the night rewriting lost arguments from my past, altering history so that I emerged victorious. -- Patrick deWitt
Nobody told all the new e-mail writers that the essence of writing is rewriting. Just because they are writing with ease and enjoyment doesn't mean they are writing well. -- William Zinsser
I try not to worry about rewriting books that worked well the first time. I'm too busy writing new books to worry about things that are already in print -- Laurell K. Hamilton
I try not to worry about rewriting books that worked well the first time. I'm too busy writing new books to worry about things that are already in print. -- Laurell K. Hamilton
Writing is rewriting; rewriting is writing - from the first crossed-out word in the first sentence to the last word inserted above a caret, that most helpful handwritten stroke. -- John Casey
That rewriting of literary history is most obvious in the case of The Yage Letters, where I was able to show that the true history inverts the official one. -- Oliver Harris
Tim Conway was a little different from the rest. He was always in the back of the studio building something with the prop man, rewriting his lines, or plotting our demise. -- Vicki Lawrence
I have a bad tendency to get rapidly bored with my own material, so rewriting is hard for me. I mean, I already know the story and would rather read something new. -- Alan Dean Foster
And after you've done the acting, there's a lot of places you can put your input - in the editing, in the production of it, in the rewriting of it and so on -- Paul Reiser
Once you start rewriting, you're not able to stop. With each draft the fundamental banality and worthlessness of the material becomes more evident even as its vitality and spontaneity are drained from it. -- Barry N. Malzberg
I do first draft in longhand, which saves a lot of rewriting. I try to get a certain amount done each day. Don't always, but I try. Then I clean up in the rewrites. -- Harry Turtledove
I didn't like people rewriting my dialogue. I didn't like the fact that we'd start a comic with the Joker, and by the time we inked it, he would have turned into the Scarecrow. -- Neil Gaiman
Rather than rewriting the law under the pretense of interpreting it, the Court should have left it to Congress to decide what to do about the Act's limitation of tax credits to state Exchanges. -- Antonin Scalia
During improvisations, I'll hear people bringing back up details from something I heard about at breakfast or something somebody was saying that they were thinking about, and it informs a rewriting of a scene. -- Joe Swanberg
I realized, in removing or rewriting these jokes, that often the jokes weren't done or that I was using, for me, the curse words as kind of a crutch. So then I just started writing. -- Jim Gaffigan
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. -- Joan Didion
I love rewriting because that is where and how you discover the story. Its like you have this skeleton, and you get to put flesh on it and hair and clothes and really wonderful jewelry. -- Caroline Leavitt
Some of our earliest codes of ethics in the so-called Western World are little more than a rewriting of the Ten Commandments. Eastern legal constructions likewise arise out of the earliest spiritual traditions and understandings. -- Neale Donald Walsch
I don't impose any word count or number-of-hours quota on myself, or have any rules, except one: persistence. Nothing glamorous. No epiphanies. Just revisiting and rewriting. For me, momentum is far more important than inspiration. -- Pam MuÃ±oz Ryan

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