Irwin Shaw Quotes

Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.

I think in any writing you're paying attention to detail.

In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style.

I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.

A good novel editor is invisible.

I spent the entire morning inserting a comma; I spent the whole afternoon removing it again.

You just can't make bad writing look good. But if you have good writing, you just say it, and it's almost done.

For me, the bottom line is what's on the page.

Writing is the easy part. The 'getting it right' part is harder.

I believe an editor's job is to help a writer sound like himself or herself.

I still don't know whether I know how to write a sentence.

I think the computer is a hindrance to good writing because it is so tempting to leave what you've written. If you use a typewriter, you must retype if you make a mistake, and thus, you must re-examine every word.

It was an instinct to put the world in order that powered her mending split infinitives and snipping off dangling participles, smoothing away the knots and bumps until the prose before her took on a sheen, like perfect caramel.

Writing is sometimes a balancing act between keeping things easily readable and being accurate.

And that's how I start myself. I usually go back a couple of pages, maybe to the beginning of the chapter, and I start reading. And as I'm reading, I'm tweaking - putting in a different word, changing the syntax, putting that clause over there, you know that sort of thing.

I read stories aloud at every stage. I listen to my writer friends when they kindly offer criticism. I listen to my husband when he tells me something doesn't seem right. I have my mother's boyfriend, Loring Janes, read to make sure I get everything right with the machines and guns.

I write the paragraph, then I'm crossing out, changing words, trying to improve it. When it seems more or less OK, then I type it up because sometimes it's almost illegible, and if I wait, I might not be able to read it the next day.

I think the best advice I give is to try not to write. Try not to overwrite, try not to make it sound too good. Just use your own voice. Use your own style of putting it down.

I try to leave out the parts readers skip.

Trying to get the sentences right and the structure of the narration right is about as big a job as I can handle. But I also know that if you handle that job properly, everything else just clicks into place.

I have a hard time revising sentences, because I spend an inordinate amount of time on each sentence, and the sentence before it, and the sentence after it.

My writing tends to become very dense, so I have to keep some cushion. Sometimes, words that seem superfluous are actually essential for the overall effect.

I'm a writer first and an editor second... or maybe third or even fourth. Successful editing requires a very specific set of skills, and I don't claim to have all of them at my command.

Once you've finished typing and moving text around and everything else, you have to leave it alone for a while. You do that to see if it stands up, to see if all the loose edges have been trimmed, if it makes sense, if it's consistent, what shape it really has. You can't tell that while you're working on it.

The biggest obstacle to professional writing is the necessity for changing a typewriter ribbon.