Rewriting Quotes

It's okay to write a cliché in a first draft; it sets a marker that you can get far, far away from in the rewrites.

Stewart Stafford

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.

There is a saying: Genius is perseverance. While genius does not consist entirely of editing, without editing it's pretty useless.

Rewriting is the crucible where books are born.

Rebels revel in rewriting reality's restrictions.

I do so much writing. But so much of it never goes anywhere, never sees any light of day. I suppose that's like gardening in the basement. I don't publish so much of what I write. I just seem to plow it back into the soil of what I write after it, rewriting and rewriting, thinking that somehow it gets better after the fifty-second-time around. I need to learn to abandon my writing. To let go of it. Dispose of it, like tissue.

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

Laurie Halse Anderson