Chris Pavone Quotes

Every book has mistakes in them, every one. There's never been a book published without mistakes.

My self-editing process is intense.

Sometimes I can spend as long revising a manuscript as I spent writing it in the first place.

I always market research my books before I hand them in by showing them to five or six close friends who I trust to be honest with me, so they are very heavily re-written already.

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 always read what I write out loud, and I did that long before any radio thing. My editor finds that unusual.

I always rewrite each day up to the point where I stopped. When it is all finished, naturally you go over it. You get another chance to correct and rewrite when someone else types it, and you see it clean in type. The last chance is in the proofs. You're grateful for these different chances.

I read what I write over and over and make corrections and improvements, until I reach the conclusion that the material deserves to stand on its own.

I draft quickly and then revise, a lot.

I'm constantly revising. Once the book is written and typed, I go through the entire draft again.

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.

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

Everybody needs an editor.

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

With the possible exception of God during the writing of the Bible, every writer in history has needed an editor. So do you.

The draft that finally goes to my editor doesn't get into her hands until I have read it out loud innumerable times - sometimes into a tape recorder - to make sure that it sounds right.

Revision is the heart of writing. Every page I do is done over seven or eight times.

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.

I always read the translator's draft all the way through - a very laborious business.

And the most important thing you can do is learn to edit yourself. And then go back and rewrite.

I very seldom read back into what I've written.

I try and get it right the first time. I may rewrite a sentence four or five times, but I rarely go back and kill a whole page and rewrite it.

I don't like re-writing very much. The fourth and the fifth draft - that's too much like work. There's not much inspiration about it, and the lawyerly side kicks in - being very careful and somewhat technical.

I don't write a quick draft and then revise; instead, I work slowly page by page, revising and polishing.

Copy editors are very important and too rarely praised.